Definition
The regular panel is the group of persons summoned and empaneled to serve as standing jurors for a court term — the venire from which juries are drawn across multiple cases during that sitting of the court. It is distinguished from a special panel, which is summoned for a single case or on an as-needed basis when the regular panel is exhausted or otherwise unavailable.
In procedural terms, the regular panel constitutes the court's standing jury supply for a given term. Individual trial juries are selected from this panel through the voir dire process for each case as it is called. Members of the regular panel remain in attendance at the court, available for service, until discharged at the close of the term or excused by the court.
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Common Confusion
REGULAR PANEL vs. JURY vs. VENIRE: These terms operate at different levels and are frequently conflated. The venire is the broader pool from which the regular panel is drawn or constitutes; the regular panel is that subset actually summoned and present at court for the term; a jury is the smaller group selected from the panel for a specific case. A juror on the regular panel is not yet a juror in any particular case until empaneled for that trial. Historical sources sometimes use "panel" loosely to mean either the regular panel or the trial jury itself — context is essential.
REGULAR PANEL vs. SPECIAL PANEL: A special panel is convened when the regular panel cannot supply a sufficient number of qualified jurors for a particular case — typically in high-profile matters requiring a large or unusually qualified pool. The distinction matters procedurally because challenges to array, jury composition, and summoning procedures may differ depending on which type of panel is at issue.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term appears most reliably in older procedural materials, state court rules, and jury practice treatises from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Researchers working in historical court records — particularly term-based docket systems where courts sat in discrete sessions — will encounter "regular panel" frequently in challenges to jury composition and in motions practice around juror availability.
Modern federal and most state court systems have largely moved away from the term-based standing panel model toward continuous or on-call juror systems, which means "regular panel" as a formal procedural category appears less often in contemporary sources. When it does appear in modern materials, it is often in contrast to special panels or in the context of courts that retain term-based structures.
For researchers in the Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia: the Tax Court uses a distinct sense of "regular" to classify case types (Regular vs. Small Tax Cases), which does not involve jury panels at all. Do not conflate the Tax Court procedural usage with the jury law concept. The connection between these corpus entries is terminological, not substantive.
For researchers in health law materials touching screening panels: medical malpractice screening panels are administrative or quasi-judicial bodies, not jury panels in the traditional sense. The word "panel" there refers to a review board, not a venire. The structural analogy is superficial.
Researchers examining historical jury challenges should note that sufficiency of the regular panel — whether enough qualified persons were summoned and present — was a recurring procedural issue, and challenges to the array were the standard mechanism for contesting it.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the principal historical dictionary source for this term. Its definition is precise and practical: the regular panel is "the number of persons who are to constitute the regular attendance of the court during the term as regular jurors; that is, as the 'standing jury.'" The citation to 106 Ky. 906, 51 S.W. 788 roots the definition in caselaw from a jurisdiction that maintained term-based court sessions, consistent with the procedural world in which the term was most operative.
Bouvier's framing usefully emphasizes two elements: (1) attendance during the term as the unit of time, and (2) the standing nature of the panel — it is not convened for a single case but serves across the term. This distinguishes the regular panel from both the individual trial jury and from emergency or special supplemental panels.
Historical dictionaries broadly agree on this usage. The term is not contested in the literature; its relative absence from modern legal dictionaries reflects obsolescence of the underlying procedure rather than any ambiguity in meaning.
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Jurisdictional Note
Usage varied by state depending on whether the jurisdiction organized court business around discrete terms. States retaining term-based systems employed the regular panel concept most formally. Federal courts and states that moved to continuous session models deprioritized the term, though the underlying distinction between standing panels and specially summoned panels persists in substance if not always in name.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Tax Court Regular vs Small Cases — The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia (terminological overlap only; substantively unrelated to jury panels)
Medical Malpractice Reform — Caps, Screening Panels, and Alternative Dispute Resolution — The Law Mind Health Law & Bioethics Encyclopedia (panel concept in a non-jury administrative context)
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