Re: SUO: Let's get to the heart of the matter
Jim,
This is no longer a question. I'm not a lawyer and neither are you.
Even if we were both lawyers we would still not be the IEEE's lawyer.
Both the IEEE Institute and the IEEE SA have outside counsel and it is
their legal advice that counts. Their legal opinion is that the New
York State Not-for-Profit law governs this issue and that the rulings by
the IEEE Corporate Governance Office (CGO) regarding Robert's Rules were
correct. The IEEE SA Board of Governors passed a resolution adopting
this legal advice as the official position of the IEEE SA.
The SUMO vote failed. The interpretation of Robert's Rules by the IEEE
CGO are binding on the SUO WG.
Teknowledge and Farance have lawyers that disagree with the IEEE
lawyers. Lawyers disagreeing with lawyers - what a shock.
It is clear that a binding decision has been made by the appropriate
authority. It's inappropriate for the chair to dispute this decision -
perhaps a member may but not the chair. The chair's role is to preside
- impartially. It is not to advocate or take sides in issues. The
chairmanship is not a management position with an agenda to push. This
leads to a loss of confidence in the chair's fairness and inhibits his
ability to foster consensus. I don't think you have ever understood this.
Do you intend to implement the decisions of the IEEE SA Board of
Governors and declare that the SUMO vote failed?
Bob
Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
>Bob,
>
> The real question at hand is whether the SUO WG, when taking a
>majority vote, should follow Robert's Rules of Order or NY State Non-profit
>Law.
>
> The Dorsey and Whitney opinion fails to even recognize the Computer
>Society Standards Activity Board P&Ps calls for working groups to follow
>RRO. It also doesn't lay out a solid argument for why NY laws would apply
>at the working group level. If you read the opinion, it says basically, "We
>had a meeting and we all agree with what Lyle said in that other message.."
>This may be an opinion from a lawyer, but I always thought legal opinions
>were supposed to lay out the complete case and back up their arguments.
>
> The Teknowledege legal opinion (Yes, we all know it came from a
>company with a particular stake in this matter) appears to lay out a
>thorough justification for the SUO Working Group following RRO, as cited in
>the SAB P&Ps. Does anyone see any holes in this opinion? Bob, do you?
>
>Jim Schoening
>