Used substantively, quorum signifies the number of persons belonging to a legislative assembly, a corporation, society, or other body, required to transact business; there is a difference between an act done by a definite number of persons, and one performed by an indefinite number: in the first case a majority is required to constitute a quorum, unless the law expressly directs that another number may make one; in the latter case any number who may be present may act, the majority of those present having, as in other cases, the right to act. 2. Sometimes the law requires a greater number than a bare majority to form a quorum, in such case no quorum is present until such a number convene. 3. When an authority is confided to several persons for a private purpose, all must join in the act, unless otherwise authorized.
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
When a committee, board of directors, meeting of shareholders, legislative or other body of persons cannot act unless a certain number at least of them are present, that number is called a “quorum.” Sweet. In the absence of any law or rule fixing the quorum, it consists of a majority of those entitled to act. Justices of the quorum. In English law, those justices of the peace whose presence at a session is necessary to make a lawful bench. All the justices of the peace for a county are named and appointed in one commission, which authorizes them all, jointly and severally, to keep the peace, but provides that some particular named justices or one of them shall always be present when business is to be transacted, the ancient Latin phrase being “quorum umim A. B. esse volumus.” These designated persons are the “justices of the quorum.” But the distinction is long since obsolete. See 1 BI. Comm. 351; Snider v. Rinehart, 18 Colo. 18, 31 Pac. 716; Gilbert v. Sweetser, 4 Me. 484. Quorum prsetextu neo auget nee mi nuit sententiam, sed tantum conflrmat prsemissa. Plowd. 52. “Quorum prcetev tu” neither increases nor diminishes a sentence, but only confirms that which went before.