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Procedural law, also called adjective law, the law governing the machinery of the courts and the methods by which both the state and the individual (the latter including groups, whether incorporated or not) enforce their rights in the several courts. Procedural law prescribes the means of enforcing rights or providing redress of wrongs and comprises rules about jurisdiction, pleading and practice, evidence, appeal, execution of judgments, representation of counsel, costs, and other matters. Procedural law is commonly contrasted with substantive law, which constitutes the great body of law and defines and regulates legal rights and duties. Thus, whereas substantive law would describe how two people might enter into a contract, procedural law would explain how someone alleging a breach of contract might seek the courts’ help in enforcing the agreement.
To be effective, law must go beyond the determination of the rights and obligations of individuals and collective bodies to say how these rights and obligations can be enforced. Moreover, it must do this in a systematic and formal way, because the failure to do so would render the legal system inefficient, unfair, and biased and, as a result, possibly upset the social peace. Embodying this systematization and formalization, procedural law constitutes the sum total of legal rules designed to ensure the enforcement of rights by means of the courts.
Because procedural law is a means for enforcing substantive rules, there are different kinds of procedural law, corresponding to the various kinds of substantive law. Criminal law is the branch of substantive law dealing with punishment for offenses against the public and has as its corollary criminal procedure, which indicates how the sanctions of criminal law must be applied. Substantive private law, which deals with the relations between private (i.e., nongovernmental) persons, whether individuals or corporate bodies, has as its corollary the rules of civil procedure. Because the object of judicial proceedings is to arrive at the truth by using the best available evidence, there must be procedural laws of evidence to govern the presentation of witnesses, documentation, and physical proof.
