Definition
General orders are rules or standing directives issued by a court to govern practice and procedure across all cases within its jurisdiction or within a defined category of cases. They operate prospectively and apply to practitioners and litigants generally, in contrast to orders entered in a specific case between specific parties.
The term carries two related but distinct meanings in legal research:
1. Court Rules and Standing Orders. In most common usage, general orders are the administrative directives a court issues to manage its docket, regulate attorney conduct, establish filing requirements, set scheduling practices, or implement local procedure. These function as the operational law of the courthouse — binding on all who appear there — and are typically published alongside the court's local rules.
2. Military and Governmental Orders. In administrative, military, and governmental law, general orders are directives issued by a commanding officer or executive authority that apply broadly to all personnel or subordinate units under command, as opposed to special orders directed to specific individuals or units. This meaning appears frequently in military law, administrative agency practice, and historical governmental records.
Common Confusion
General orders are distinct from local rules, though the two serve overlapping functions. Local rules are formally promulgated under rule-making authority (such as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 83) and require public comment periods and appellate approval. General orders are typically issued by a chief judge or court en banc with less procedural formality and may be amended more quickly. In practice, a court may maintain both a body of local rules and a library of standing general orders; researchers should check both. Courts sometimes use the terms interchangeably, which compounds the confusion.
General orders should also be distinguished from standing orders, a term some courts use for orders that apply to all cases assigned to a single judge rather than court-wide.
Why It Matters in Research
Practitioners and researchers frequently overlook general orders when researching court procedure, defaulting to published local rules. This is a significant gap. Courts routinely use general orders to adapt procedure in response to emergencies, technology changes, or administrative necessity — sometimes overriding or supplementing local rules without amending them formally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, federal district courts issued cascading general orders modifying filing deadlines, hearing formats, and jury procedures; these were not captured in the published local rules.
For historical corpus research, the term "general orders" appears across strikingly different legal contexts — court procedure, military law, bankruptcy practice (the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 and its predecessors were administered under a formal body known as the General Orders in Bankruptcy, promulgated by the Supreme Court), and administrative agency directives. Researchers encountering "general orders" in 19th- or early 20th-century sources should identify the issuing body before assuming court procedural meaning.
The General Orders in Bankruptcy deserve specific attention. From 1867 through the modern Bankruptcy Code era, the Supreme Court issued formal General Orders governing bankruptcy procedure. These were distinct from local rules, carried federal authority, and are frequently cited in historical bankruptcy cases and treatises. They were superseded by the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure in 1983 but remain essential to understanding pre-Code bankruptcy practice.
In military law research, general orders appear as primary sources of command authority, disciplinary standards, and operational directives. Their legal weight differs significantly from court general orders, and conflating the two contexts in historical sources produces interpretive errors.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in close agreement, both defining general orders as court rules or directives entered for the guidance of practitioners and the general regulation of procedure, contrasted with orders made in particular cases. Both equate general orders with "the rules of court" — a formulation that reflects 19th-century practice when the distinction between general orders and formally promulgated rules was less sharp than it is today.
What both historical dictionaries miss: neither addresses the General Orders in Bankruptcy as a distinct and influential body of federal law, nor do they engage the military and administrative law meanings that appear throughout contemporary primary sources. Researchers relying solely on these definitions will be underprepared for the full range of uses they will encounter in historical legal materials.
Jurisdictional Note
General orders vary significantly by court. Federal district courts, bankruptcy courts, and circuit courts each maintain independent libraries of general orders, and practice within a single circuit can differ courthouse to courthouse. State courts use the term with varying formality — some treat general orders as binding administrative law; others use them as informal guidance. Always consult the specific court's website or clerk's office to identify current standing general orders before assuming the local rules capture the full procedural picture.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Pretrial Conferences and Scheduling Orders — Rule 16 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia) [civpro_74]