Definition
A general term is a regularly scheduled session of a court convened for the ordinary business of hearing and deciding cases on the merits. The phrase distinguishes routine, full-docket sittings from special terms, which are convened for limited purposes such as hearing motions, disposing of procedural matters, or addressing a particular case or class of cases.
The term carries two related but distinct meanings in historical usage:
1. Regular session. A general term is the court's standard sitting for the trial and final determination of causes — the workhorse session where cases are called, tried, and decided in the normal course.
2. Sitting in banc. In some jurisdictions and court systems, "general term" specifically designated a sitting of the full bench — all (or a quorum of) the judges of a court sitting together — as opposed to a single-judge or nisi prius sitting. This usage was common in nineteenth-century American appellate practice, particularly in New York and other states where intermediate appellate courts were organized by term rather than by panel.
Common Confusion
General term and special term are paired opposites and are sometimes conflated by researchers encountering them in older procedural records. A special term was not a lesser or unusual session — in many busy courts it was a frequent, even daily, occurrence — but it was convened for specific, limited purposes and did not carry the full trial and disposition authority of a general term. Researchers should also avoid conflating general term (a sitting of the court) with general term in the contractual sense, which is unrelated procedural vocabulary.
Additionally, the in banc meaning of general term diverges from the modern en banc, though the concepts are related. In nineteenth-century usage, a general term sitting could function as the appellate tier within a single court, reviewing decisions made at nisi prius or at special term by a single judge of the same court. This is a structural feature that no longer exists in most American jurisdictions.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational essential for researchers working in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American court records, procedural histories, and reported decisions. Several traps await:
First, the in banc usage. New York's Supreme Court, before the Court of Appeals became the court of last resort in its modern form, organized its appellate review through general terms of the Supreme Court itself. Decisions labeled "General Term" in New York reporters from roughly the 1840s through 1895 are intermediate appellate decisions, not trial-level rulings. Misreading their procedural posture can distort analysis of how a legal question developed.
Second, jurisdictional inconsistency. Not all states used "general term" to mean the same thing. In some jurisdictions it meant only the regular trial session; in others it carried the full in banc appellate meaning. The Black's and Bouvier's definitions both hedge with "in some jurisdictions" for good reason.
Third, the term largely disappears from American procedural vocabulary in the twentieth century. Court reorganization acts, the adoption of unified court systems, and the spread of the Federal Rules model eliminated the structural features that made the general term/special term distinction meaningful. Researchers working across a time range that spans reorganization should expect the phrase to appear in earlier materials and vanish in later ones.
Fourth, the term has no meaningful presence in federal court records. Federal courts did not organize their sittings under this terminology in the same systematic way. Encountering "general term" in a federal context is unusual and warrants close attention to what the court actually meant.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in close agreement on this term — unusually so. Both define it as a regular session for trial and decision of causes, distinguished from a special term for motions, routine business, or special case lists, and both note the secondary meaning as a sitting in banc. Bouvier's phrasing is marginally fuller ("trial and decision" versus Black's "trial and determination"), but the substance is identical.
Neither dictionary is entirely satisfactory for the researcher who needs to understand the structural significance of the general term in specific state court systems. The in banc function — particularly as it operated in New York, where general term decisions occupied a defined place in the appellate hierarchy — is noted but not explained. For that, secondary sources on state court history and period procedural treatises are more useful than either dictionary entry.
Both entries reflect usage that was already fading when the dictionaries were compiled. The definitions describe a feature of American procedural organization that was being dismantled by court reform movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jurisdictional Note
The term was most systematically used in New York, where it had specific structural meaning as an intermediate appellate tier. Other states — including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and several others with similar court organizations — used the term but not always identically. Researchers should verify what "general term" meant in the specific jurisdiction and era they are examining before relying on any general definition.