This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this articlebyadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Substantive law" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Substantive law is the set of laws that governs how members of a society are to behave.[1] It is contrasted with procedural law, which is the set of procedures for making, administering, and enforcing substantive law.[1] Substantive law defines rights and responsibilitiesincivil law, and crimes and punishmentsincriminal law,[1] substantive equalityorsubstantive due process. It may be codifiedinstatutes or exist through precedentincommon law. Substantive laws, which govern outcomes, are contrasted with procedural laws, which govern procedure.
Henry Sumner Maine said of early law, "So great is the ascendency of the Law of Actions in the infancy of Courts of Justice, that substantive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure; and the early lawyer can only see the law through the envelope of its technical forms."[2]
Authority control databases: National ![]() |
|
---|
![]() | This legal term article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |