Definition
A general challenge is a challenge for cause directed at a prospective juror on grounds that disqualify that person from serving as a juror in any case whatsoever — not merely in the case at hand. It attacks the juror's basic legal competency or fitness to serve at all, as opposed to a specific objection tied to the particular facts, parties, or subject matter before the court.
A general challenge differs from a peremptory challenge, which requires no stated reason, and from a challenge to the favor or a principal challenge, which addresses a juror's partiality in the specific proceeding. The general challenge removes a juror on categorical grounds: the person lacks the threshold qualifications the law requires of any juror anywhere.
Typical grounds include lack of citizenship, age, conviction of a felony, mental incapacity, or other statutory disqualifications that render a person ineligible for jury service as a matter of law regardless of the case's nature.
Common Confusion
GENERAL CHALLENGE vs. CHALLENGE TO THE FAVOR vs. PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE
These three mechanisms are frequently conflated in older sources and modern practice alike. A general challenge attacks absolute disqualification — the juror cannot lawfully serve in any case. A challenge to the favor (also called a principal challenge in some frameworks) attacks a juror's impartiality in the specific case at bar — the juror may be perfectly competent in other cases but is biased here. A peremptory challenge requires no cause at all and is exercised as a matter of right, limited by number. Researchers reading nineteenth-century trial records or treatises should be alert to inconsistent use of these labels; some sources use "challenge for cause" as an umbrella covering both general challenges and challenges to the favor without distinguishing them.
Why It Matters in Research
The term appears most prominently in nineteenth-century procedural codes and treatises on jury practice. The California Penal Code provision cited by both Black's and Bouvier's (§ 1071) represents a codification movement that swept American jurisdictions in the latter half of the 1800s, attempting to systematize what had been a loosely defined common law practice. Researchers using pre-codification sources — particularly colonial and early republic materials — may find the terminology absent or inconsistently applied; the concept existed, but the label "general challenge" was not universal.
In modern federal and most state practice, the term has largely been absorbed into the broader category of "challenge for cause," and the formal distinction between "general" and "specific" challenge types is rarely articulated in contemporary judicial opinions or procedural rules. A researcher searching modern case law for "general challenge" will mostly surface irrelevant results — particularly constitutional law usage where "general challenge" or "facial challenge" carries an entirely different meaning (see Encyclopedia Cross-Reference below). Be precise in search strategy: pair the term with "juror" or "jury selection" to isolate the procedural voir dire context.
Jurisdictional codifications matter here. Where a state enacted a code modeled on California's, the § 1071 framework (or its successor provision) governs; where common law traditions persisted longer, courts relied on judge-made doctrine. Bouvier's and Black's both anchor their definitions to the California code, which signals that the codified version was the clearest available articulation rather than a universally adopted standard.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in full agreement on this term, to the point of near-identical wording — both define the general challenge as a challenge for cause disqualifying the juror from service in any case, and both cite California Penal Code § 1071 as the authoritative source. The convergence is not surprising: the California code was among the most influential and thoroughly drafted procedural codes of the era, and lexicographers naturally gravitated to its precision.
What neither dictionary addresses is the practical procedure for raising the challenge — how the objection was made, what evidence sufficed, or how courts resolved disputed facts about a juror's qualifications. For that, researchers must turn to period treatises on jury practice. The dictionaries also do not reflect the subsequent erosion of the formal general/specific distinction in twentieth-century procedural reform; their entries capture a snapshot of nineteenth-century codified practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Modern federal practice under the Federal Rules of Criminal and Civil Procedure does not use the term "general challenge" as a term of art; challenges for cause are governed by Fed. R. Crim. P. 24 and Fed. R. Civ. P. 47 without that subdivision. Some state codes retain explicit general/specific challenge distinctions derived from nineteenth-century models; others have merged all cause-based challenges under a single statutory heading. Researchers working with state materials should check the operative procedural code directly.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia — Facial Challenges vs. As-Applied Challenges: Note that the constitutional law usage of "general challenge" (as a near-synonym for facial challenge) is categorically distinct from the jury practice usage defined here. Researchers must not conflate the two.