Definition
Regule generales (Latin: "general rules") are standing rules of court that a tribunal promulgates on its own authority to govern its practice and procedure. Unlike orders or judgments issued in particular cases, regule generales apply across the board to all litigants and proceedings coming before the court. They cover matters such as filing deadlines, motion practice, the form of pleadings, and courtroom conduct. The term appears most frequently in older common-law sources and in historical practice materials; modern courts accomplish the same function through court rules, local rules, or general orders, and the Latin phrase is rarely encountered outside historical research.
Common Confusion
Regule generales should not be confused with special rules or orders directed at a specific case or party. Rapalje & Lawrence flags this distinction explicitly, cross-referencing usage of "regular" in the sense of "general" as opposed to "special." A standing procedural rule of general application is a regula generalis; an order tailored to the circumstances of a single proceeding is not. Researchers encountering the word "regular" in older New York or North Carolina practice reports should note that it sometimes carries this technical sense of "generally applicable" rather than simply meaning "ordinary" or "routine."
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially a creature of historical legal practice and will surface almost exclusively in older English and early American court records, treatises, and procedural manuals. Several research traps are worth noting.
First, the Latin form regule generales (or the anglicized "general rules of court") was the standard vocabulary for what modern practitioners call local rules or standing orders. When reading nineteenth-century pleading and practice materials — especially New York, North Carolina, or Missouri sources, which Rapalje & Lawrence cites directly — expect the phrase to signal a court's self-generated procedural framework, not a legislative enactment or a rule of decision.
Second, the distinction between a regula generalis and a special order had real procedural consequences in historical practice. Whether a rule was "general" or "special" affected how parties were bound by it, how it was published or noticed, and sometimes which court officers had authority to act under it. The Rapalje & Lawrence cross-references to 4 How. (N.Y.) Pr. 83 and 72 N.C. 155 reflect active litigation over exactly this line.
Third, English Chancery and King's Bench practice gave considerable prominence to regule generales as instruments of judicial self-governance, and English treatises from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries treat them as a recognized category of court authority. American courts inherited this vocabulary but gradually displaced it with codified procedural rules — first through Field Code reforms beginning in 1848 in New York, and eventually through the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938. Post-reform sources rarely use the Latin term, so a researcher tracing a procedural point across that transition must be alert to the terminological shift.
Fourth, do not conflate regule generales with statutory rules of court (rules promulgated under express legislative authority) or with rules of decision (substantive legal standards). The regule generales tradition rests on the inherent authority of courts to regulate their own proceedings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence provides the only source-dictionary entry here, and it is concise but precise: regule generales are "general rules which the courts promulgate from time to time for the regulation of their practice." The definition accurately captures the self-promulgating, prospective, and practice-governing character of these rules. The appended cross-references are useful: they signal that contemporaneous courts were working through the boundary between "general" and "special" rules in a way that had practical procedural stakes, and that usage in New York, North Carolina, and Missouri practice was sufficiently settled to generate reported decisions. No deeper synthesis is possible from the single source, but the entry is reliable as far as it goes. Notably, Rapalje & Lawrence does not address the English antecedents of the term or the displacement of regule generales by code pleading — gaps a researcher should fill by consulting Tidd's Practice or Archbold's Practice for the English background, and the New York Code Commissioner's reports for the American transition.