Definition
Persons appointed to decide challenges to jurors for favor — that is, to hear and determine whether a prospective juror who has been challenged on grounds of partiality or bias is actually qualified to serve. Triors do not themselves decide the case; their sole function is to evaluate the fitness of a challenged juror.
Typically no more than two triors are appointed, unless both parties consent to a larger number or one of the triors raises a special circumstance. Where only one juror has been sworn, two triors may be appointed alongside that juror. The triors hear the evidence bearing on the challenge and return a finding of qualified or unqualified.
In a secondary historical sense, triors also referred to the lords appointed to try a peer indicted for felony before the Court of the Lord High Steward — a now-obsolete English procedure in which peers were judged by fellow peers rather than by a common jury.
Common Confusion
TRIORS / TRIERS: The terms are variant spellings of the same concept. Rapalje & Lawrence simply cross-references "See TRIERS," treating the forms as interchangeable. Modern legal writing and most American sources prefer the spelling triers; triors appears predominantly in older English sources and early American dictionaries. Researchers should run both spellings in historical corpus searches to avoid missing relevant material.
TRIORS / JURORS: Triors are not jurors in the ordinary sense. They are appointees with a narrow evidentiary function — deciding the challenge — not the merits of the underlying case.
Why It Matters in Research
Triors belong to the historical machinery of jury selection and appear almost exclusively in older sources. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century English or early American common law materials will encounter the term most frequently in treatises on jury practice and pleading. Modern American jury procedure has largely absorbed the challenge-for-cause determination into the judge's role, making triors as a formal institution functionally obsolete in most U.S. jurisdictions. As a result, the term rarely appears in modern case law or statute, and its absence from contemporary legal writing can mislead researchers into thinking the concept never existed in American practice.
The secondary meaning — lords as triors of peers — connects to the English peerage system and the abolished procedure of trial by the House of Lords. This meaning has no American analog and should be understood purely as English constitutional history.
When searching Law Mind corpus materials, note that entries for TRIERS and TRIORS are not always cross-indexed consistently across sources. Bouvier provides the most substantive procedural treatment; Black's (both editions) provides comparable but slightly terser coverage. Neither edition of Black's cites American authority for the triors procedure specifically, which itself is informative: the mechanism was imported from English practice and never developed a robust independent American case law tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are largely in agreement. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) define triors identically, incorporating the peerage meaning via Mozley & Whitley. Bouvier provides the most procedurally detailed account, specifying the two-trior limit and citing Coke on Littleton and Bacon's Abridgement — the foundational English common law authorities. Rapalje & Lawrence decline to define the term independently, redirecting to TRIERS, signaling that the spelling variant was already considered secondary by the late nineteenth century.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the transition in American practice away from triors as a formal appointment toward judicial management of voir dire. That shift is not captured in any of the four sources and must be traced through later procedural history outside the dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
The triors procedure was a feature of English common law trial practice, absorbed unevenly into American colonial and early state courts. It has no modern statutory footing in most U.S. jurisdictions, where judges now rule on challenges for cause. English practice formally retained elements of the triors procedure longer; the peerage meaning became obsolete upon abolition of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords.