Procedural Law

procedural law

Law that prescribes the procedures and methods for enforcing rights and duties and for obtaining redress (e.g., in a suit). It is distinguished from substantive law (i.e., law that creates, defines, or regulates rights and duties). Procedural law is a set of established forms for conducting a trial and regulating the events that precede and follow it. It prescribes rules relative to jurisdiction, pleading and practice, jury selection, evidence, appeal, execution of judgments, representation of counsel, costs, registration (e.g., of a stock offer), prosecution of crime, and conveyancing (transference of deeds, leases, etc.), among other matters.

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Procedural Law 

those norms of a legal system that regulate relations that develop during the investigation of crimes and the hearing and resolution of criminal and civil cases. Procedural law is inseparably linked with substantive law because the former establishes the procedures that are necessary to exercise and defend the latter. There are two basic forms of legal proceedings: civil and criminal. Soviet procedural legislation establishes truly democratic methods of conducting fair trials on the basis of the principle of socialist legality.