n, and when the assembly, either by a rule or by a
vote, decides that a certain person shall not remain in the room, it is
the duty of the chairman to enforce the rule or order, using whatever
force is necessary to eject the party.

The chairman can detail members to remove the person, without calling
upon the police. If, however, in enforcing the order, any one uses
harsher treatment than is necessary to remove the person, the courts
have held that he, and he alone is liable to prosecution, just the same
as a policeman would be under similar circumstances. However badly the
man may be abused while being removed from the room, neither the
chairman nor the society are liable for damages, as, in ordering his
removal, they did not exceed their legal rights.

Rights of Ecclesiastical Tribunals. Many of our deliberative assemblies
are ecclesiastical bodies, and it is important to know how much respect
will be paid to their decisions by the civil courts.

A church became divided and each party

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claimed to be the church, and therefore entitled to the church property.
The case was taken into the civil courts, and finally, on appeal, to the
U. S. Supreme Court, which held the case under advisement for one year,
and then reversed the decision of the State Court, because it conflicted
with the decision of the highest ecclesiastical court that had acted
upon the case. The Supreme Court, in rendering its decision, laid down
the broad principle that, when a local church is but a part of a larger
and more general organization or denomination, it will accept the
decision of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal to which the case has
been carried within that general church organization, as final, and will
not inquire into the justice or injustice of its decree as between the
parties before it. The officers, the ministers, the members, or the
church body which the highest judiciary of the denomination recognizes,
the court will recognize. Whom that body expels or cuts off, the court
will hold to be no longer members of that church.

Trial of Members of Societies. Every deliberative assembly, having the
right to purify its own body, must therefore have the right to
investigate the character of its members.

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It can require any of them to testify in the case, under pain of
expulsion