A joint session or joint convention is, most broadly, when two normally-separate decision-making groups meet together, often in a special session or other extraordinary meeting, for a specific purpose.
Most often it refers to when both houses of a bicameral legislature sit together. A joint session typically occurs to receive foreign or domestic diplomats or leaders, or to allow both houses to consider bills together.
Some Constitutions give special power to a joint session, voting by majority of all Members of the Legislature regardless of which House/ chamber they belong to. For example, in Switzerland a joint session of the two houses elects the members of the Federal Council (cabinet). In India, disputes between Houses are resolved by a joint sitting but without an intervening election.
Read more about Joint Session: Australia, Canada, France, India, Philippines, United States, United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words joint and/or session:
“No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“The bar is the male kingdom. For centuries it was the bastion of male privilege, the gathering place for men away from their women, a place where men could go to freely indulge in The Bull Session ... the release of the guilty anxiety of the oppressor class.”
—Shulamith Firestone (b. 1945)