Definition
A challenge to the array is an objection made to an entire jury panel — the "array" — rather than to any individual juror. It attacks the validity of the panel as a whole, typically on the ground that the officer responsible for summoning or returning the panel (historically the sheriff, coroner, or other empaneling officer) acted with partiality, fraud, or some legal default in the selection or assembly process. A successful challenge to the array results in the panel being quashed and a new one ordered; it does not target the fitness of any particular juror.
The term is best understood against its procedural backdrop: before trial, a party may challenge prospective jurors either individually (challenge to the polls) or collectively (challenge to the array). The array challenge addresses the structural integrity of the panel's formation, not the personal qualifications of the individuals within it.
Common Confusion
CHALLENGE TO THE ARRAY vs. CHALLENGE TO THE POLLS: These two forms of jury challenge are frequently conflated in older sources. A challenge to the array attacks the entire panel at once, based on a defect in how the panel was assembled or who assembled it. A challenge to the polls challenges individual jurors for cause (bias, relationship to a party, legal disqualification) or through peremptory challenges. A researcher encountering either term in historical sources should confirm which type of challenge is being discussed, since the grounds, procedure, and remedy differ entirely. Black's and Burrill's both treat these as distinct doctrinal categories.
Core Elements
A challenge to the array historically required the challenging party to establish:
1. A defect in the officer or process: The challenge must be directed at the sheriff, coroner, elisors, or other empaneling officer — not at the panel members themselves.
2. Partiality or default: Either active partiality (bias, favoritism toward a party) or a legal default (failure to follow proper procedure in summoning or returning the panel).
3. Collective scope: The objection must go to the panel as a whole. If only some jurors are affected, the proper vehicle is individual challenges to the polls, not a challenge to the array.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Challenges to the array historically fell into two categories:
- Principal challenge to the array: Based on a specific, provable ground of partiality or legal default — for example, that the sheriff was related to a party or had a direct interest in the outcome.
- Challenge to the array for favor: Based on circumstances raising a reasonable suspicion of bias in the empaneling officer, even without proof of an explicit disqualifying interest. This category required a higher showing and was submitted to the decision of triers appointed for that purpose.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively historical in modern American practice. Researchers will encounter it primarily in pre-twentieth-century case reporters, treatises, and procedural manuals. Its practical significance faded as jury selection became governed by statute and court rule rather than the sheriff's common-law return function, and as structured voir dire replaced the challenge-to-the-array mechanism as the primary vehicle for attacking systemic panel defects.
Several research traps apply:
- The word "array" shifts meaning: In some older sources, "array" refers to the physical list or return itself; in others, it refers to the assembled panel. The challenge applies to both, but the framing differs depending on which sense the source is using.
- Conflation with modern Batson-style challenges: Modern challenges to racially or systematically discriminatory jury selection practices (Batson v. Kentucky and its progeny) are conceptually related — both attack the composition of the panel rather than individual jurors — but they arise from constitutional equal protection doctrine, not the common-law array challenge. Do not treat historical array challenges as precedent for or against modern systematic-exclusion doctrine.
- Jurisdictional survival varies: Some states codified a form of array challenge in their criminal procedure statutes well into the twentieth century. If researching a specific jurisdiction's jury law, check whether the challenge to the array was preserved by statute or abolished upon adoption of modern procedural codes.
- Burrill's cross-references are useful entry points: Burrill directs readers to Wharton's American Criminal Law, which provides more developed treatment of array challenges in the American context than Blackstone's commentary, which describes the English common-law framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's are in close agreement, both tracking Blackstone's Commentaries (Book 3) and Coke on Littleton for the core definition. The definition is remarkably stable across both dictionaries: the challenge is an exception to the whole panel, grounded in partiality or default of the empaneling officer.
Burrill adds a reference to Wharton's American Criminal Law that Black's omits — a useful signal that the doctrine had been adapted to American practice and was not purely theoretical. Neither dictionary addresses what remedy followed a successful challenge beyond the implication that the array would be quashed, nor do they describe the procedural mechanics of how the challenge was raised and decided. Researchers needing those details should consult Wharton or period criminal procedure treatises directly.
Both sources reflect the English common-law baseline. Neither accounts for the significant variation in how American states handled the challenge to the array once legislatures began codifying jury selection procedures in the nineteenth century.
Jurisdictional Note
The challenge to the array was part of the common-law jury system inherited from England and was recognized across American jurisdictions in the nineteenth century. Its continued vitality depended on state codification: some states expressly preserved it in criminal procedure statutes, others subsumed it into general provisions for challenging the jury panel, and others effectively abolished it when adopting modern procedural codes. Federal practice migrated toward statutory and rule-based frameworks. A researcher should not assume the doctrine operated identically — or at all — in a given jurisdiction without checking local statutes contemporary to the case being researched.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Facial Challenges vs. As-Applied Challenges — useful for researchers tracing the structural logic of challenges that attack a process or mechanism wholesale rather than as applied to an individual.