Abstract
The Special Committee on By-laws for the Nomenclature Section was established at the XVIII International Botanical Congress (IBC) in Melbourne in 2011, with the mandate to formalize the procedures by which changes to the Code are considered and voted upon by the Nomenclature Section, and to report to the XIX IBC in Shenzhen in 2017. With the wider participation of the community in nomenclature in general, and to address some past contentious issues in particular, the need for a clearer set of rules for management of the Nomenclature Section had surfaced.
In light of this, the Committee conducted extensive negotiations and discussions on a wide range of governance topics, which are here summarized in the Committee's report. We propose the adoption of a new and greatly expanded version of Division III of the Code.
This report provides the supporting documentation for the proposal that is also published in this issue (Knapp & al. in Taxon 65: 661-664. 2016). It is necessary that the two documents be read alongside each other.