The phrase "a general duty" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a broad or overarching responsibility that is expected of someone or a group.
Example: "As a citizen, it is our general duty to participate in the democratic process and vote in elections."
Alternatives: "a broad obligation" or "a universal responsibility".
Few theorists after Thomas Hobbes and David Hume have argued that there is a general duty to obey the law or that political authority is generally legitimate (Hobbes 1668; Hume 1965).
Instead, councils will be under a general duty to seek the best value at all times.
But it is considered a "general duty" under Defense Department directives to do so.
This suggests that agencies have a general duty to consider those harms in making those decisions unless precluded by statute.
It also placed a general duty on public bodies to promote equality of opportunity and good race relations.
French law by contrast has since 1945 recognized a general duty to aid a person in physical danger if that can be done without risk to the rescuer.
His tertiary qualification was unusual for a general duties officer in the pre-war Air Force, whose pilots were generally said to have "valued little beyond flying ability".
Thus, on this account, the consequentialist secures only derivatively special obligations: reasons to take special care of a select group of people that are derived from a more general duty to care for all persons as such.
He said companies could be fined if they failed to meet a minimal general duty to prevent serious workplace injuries.
The green paper proposes to replace these unnecessarily detailed requirements with a more general duty under which judges would have discretion to explain the sentence in their own way, in a manner that can be understood by all.
For instance, "animal rights" advocate Tom Regan (1983) argues that those animals with intrinsic value (or what he calls "inherent value") have the moral right to respectful treatment, which then generates a general moral duty on our part not to treat them as mere means to other ends.
