Definition
A challenge to the favor is a procedural objection raised against a prospective juror that, while falling short of a principal challenge (which rests on a specific, automatic ground of disqualification), points to circumstances that raise a probable suspicion of bias or partiality. The challenging party does not allege an absolute legal disqualification but instead asks that the juror's fitness be examined on account of some relationship, acquaintance, or circumstance that suggests the juror may not be entirely indifferent between the parties. Because the ground asserted is not one recognized as conclusive, the question of whether the juror is favorable or unfavorable must be submitted to triors — persons specially appointed to hear and decide that collateral question — rather than resolved by the court as a matter of law.
Common Confusion
CHALLENGE TO THE FAVOR vs. PRINCIPAL CHALLENGE vs. PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE
These three forms of juror challenge are frequently conflated in historical sources and in general usage.
A principal challenge rests on a stated cause that the law regards as sufficient on its face to exclude the juror without further inquiry — prior conviction, direct financial interest in the outcome, or the like. No discretion is involved; the ground, if established, operates automatically.
A challenge to the favor occupies the middle ground. The objection is real but not absolute. The challenging party must persuade the triors that the circumstance alleged — familiarity with a party, a prior relationship, or similar connection — actually renders the juror partial. The outcome is fact-dependent and discretionary with the triors.
A peremptory challenge requires no stated reason at all. It is a right to exclude a juror without cause, subject only to constitutional limits on discriminatory use. The challenge to the favor, by contrast, requires a reason, but that reason need not be a legally conclusive one.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the pre-twentieth-century common law of jury trial. Researchers will encounter it most often in treatises, digests, and opinions from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly those drawing on Blackstone or reproducing the English practice of jury selection. It has largely disappeared from modern procedural vocabulary, where the functional distinction it captured has been absorbed into the broader rubric of "challenge for cause" — a category that covers both what the common law called principal challenges and challenges to the favor without distinguishing between them.
The key research trap is anachronism: a modern reader scanning a historical source that mentions a "challenge for cause" cannot assume the author meant only principal challenges. Conversely, a source distinguishing "principal challenge" from "challenge to the favor" is operating within the classical tripartite framework (principal / favor / peremptory) and should be read accordingly.
The role of the triors is a second point of historical specificity. In the classical English and early American practice, challenges to the favor were resolved not by the judge but by two jurors already sworn (the triors), who heard evidence on the question of the challenged juror's partiality and returned a finding of "favorable" or "not favorable." This mechanism is vestigial or abolished in virtually all American jurisdictions, where the trial judge now rules on challenges for cause. Sources referencing triors in this context are describing this specific procedural institution and should not be read as referring to the modern trier of fact.
Researchers working in the history of jury selection, Sixth Amendment doctrine, or comparative procedure will find the challenge to the favor relevant as a conceptual ancestor of the modern for-cause challenge and as evidence of how differently the common law structured the inquiry into juror bias.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines the challenge to the favor as arising "where the party has no principal challenge, but objects only some probable circumstances of suspicion, as acquaintance, and the like, the validity of which must be left to the determination of triors, whose office it is to decide whether the juror be favorable or unfavorable," citing Blackstone's Commentaries at 3 Bl. Comm. 363 and 4 Bl. Comm. 353. The definition is terse but accurate and faithful to the classical common law structure. It correctly identifies the two defining features: the absence of an absolute disqualifying ground, and the submission of the question to triors rather than to the court.
What Black's does not address is the subsequent collapse of this category into the modern challenge for cause, or the abolition of the trior mechanism in American practice. Researchers should treat the Black's entry as a reliable account of the historical common law rule and not as a description of current procedure in any American jurisdiction.
Jurisdictional Note
The challenge to the favor as a distinct procedural category has been superseded in American courts. Modern federal and state procedural rules recognize challenges for cause without formally subdividing them into principal challenges and challenges to the favor. The classical English framework, including the role of triors, survives in some common law jurisdictions outside the United States, and may still be encountered by name in Canadian and English authorities.