Substantive And Procedural Law

Both substantive and procedural laws are inevitable components of law of any civilized society. One without the other has neither any useful and meaningful existence nor any significance as well. Both, substantive law and procedural law, are mutually reinforcing and one acquires greater meaning and validity in presence of the other. Both these laws have their own functions and significance. We will discuss each of these laws below.

Concept Of Substantive Law

The law which defines rights and liabilities is known as substantive law. It is so called because it puts in a clear-cut and precise form the substance of the subject matter for enforcing which the courts of law and the officers of law exist. The function of substantive law is to define, create or confer substantive legal rights or legal status or to impose and define the nature and extent of legal duties or people or between them and the State. Any wrong done by an individual, group Substantive Law and Procedural Law of persons or the state against the other(s) will make the wrong-doer accordingly liable to the others.

Wrongs may be either civil or criminal. Substantive law refers to all categories of public and private law, including the law of contracts, property, torts and crimes of all kinds. For a civil wrong, law calls upoil and forces the wrong-doer to perform his part of contract; to do the act in question which it was his legal duty or obligation to have done the very act, or the failure or the denial to do which is the wrong in question against which remedy is sought.

Where such performance, known in legal language as specific performance, is not possible then the wrong-doer is liable to pay damages or compensation to the one who suffers from such wrong. It could be a wrong against any private person or against society as such, or against the State itself. State has right and power to maintain the law and order within the community, to keep society intact, if it has been disturbed.

A criminal wrong, on the other hand, has an altogether different character. A criminal wrong is an act or omission which is made punishable by any law for the time being in force; and, in legal language, it is called an offence. Substantive law deals with the "substance" of your charges, incase of any crime done against the other.

Every charge is comprised of elements. Elements are the specific acts needed to complete a crime. Substantive law requires that the prosecutor prove every element of a crime in order for someone to be convicted of that crime. What elements are required will depend on the crime with which you are charged vis-i-vis the State's laws.

For example: Suppose you are charged with a felony driving while intoxicated.

Here, at four States the prosecutors are required to prove that:

1. You were driving or operating a motor vehicle.
2. Driving on a public roadway.
3. Driving while you were intoxicated.
4. And that you have prior convictions, if any, for driving while intoxicated.

Substantive law is the statutory or written law that governs rights and obligations of those who are subject to it. It defines the legal relationship of people with other people or between them and the State. In other words, substantive law defines, in regard to a specific subject, the legal rights and relationship of people with other people or as between them and the State. Substantive law defines civil rights and responsibilities lliabilities in civil law as well as crimes and punishments in the criminal law. It is codified in legislated statutes or can be enacted through the initiative process.

For example: Murder is an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and is defined therein. The IPC also provides for punishnlent for the crime. This is known as substantive law. Similarly, the provision of the lndian Contract Act, 1872 are substantive in nature.

Substantive law has increased in volume and changed rapidly in the twentieth century as the Central and State legislatures have enacted statutes that displace many common law principles. The Indian Contract Act, the Transfer of Property Act, the Industrial Disputes Act, the Indian Penal Code are instances of substantive of Indian Legal

Concept Of Procedural Law System

The law which tells about how the courts and the officers dealing with the law act in giving effects to the substantive law of the land is known as Procedural law. 'Civil' and 'Criminal' laws are not two water-tight compartments. There are several wrongs for which there are both civil and criminal liabilities and there may be actions which are both civil and criminal in nature.

The law of procedure is that branch of law which governs the process of litigation. It embodies the rules governing the institution and prosecution of civil and criminal proceedings. Procedural law comprises the rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in civil or criminal proceedings.

Historically, the law known to many is substantive law, and procedural law has been a matter of concern to those who used to preside as judicial officers or those who advocate law. But, over time, the courts have developed rules of evidence and procedure, which also fall under procedural law mostly related to fairness and transparency of the process.

According to Salmond (Fitzgerald, 2006) the law of procedure is the law of actions. The word 'actions' is used in the sense to include all legal proceedings. Procedural law deals with the means and instruments by which the ends of administration of justice are attained, i.e. effective administration or application of substantive law. Procedural law is the vehicle providing the means and instruments by which those ends are attained. It regulates the conduct of the Courts and the litigants in respect of the litigation itself, whereas substantive law detennines their conduct and relations in respect of the matters litigated.

In brief, the procedural law: informs about the process that a case will go through (whether it goes to trial or not); determines how a proceeding concerning the enforcement of substantive law will occur; and prescribes the practice, procedure and machinery for enforcement of the rights and liabilities. The Indian Evidence Act, the Limitation Act, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Code of Criminal Procedure are instances of procedural law.

Interrelationship And Differences Between Substantive Law And Procedural Law

It is interesting for us to know the relationship and differences, if any, between the substantive law and procedural law.

Both are related to each other as follows:

• Substantive law and procedural law are the two main categories within the law. One without the other is useless. Both are essential for the delivery of justice.
   
• Procedural law is an adjunct or an accessory to substantive law and renders the enforcement of substantive rights very effective.
   
• Both, substantive law and procedural law, are codified in the form of rules. While the substantive law refers to the body of rules that stipulate the rights and obligations of individuals and collective bodies, the procedural law is also the body of rules but governing the process of determining the stipulated rights and liabilities of the parties in the given facts and circumstances.
   
• Substantive laws and procedural laws exist in both civil and criminal laws. But, in criminal law, if the procedural law is used to prevent the commission of offenses, then it assumes the character of substantive law as well. We also need to understand the difference or the distinction between substantive law and procedural law.
  
  Substantive law precedes the procedural law. Concepts of substantive law and criminal law as well as the relationship and the distinction between the two broad branches of law, let us now have a look at the substantive and procedural laws with special reference to civil and criminal laws.

Remedial Laws And Penal Laws

Remedial Statutes

Remedial statutes are those statutes which have come to be enacted on demand of the permanent public policy generally receive a liberal interpretation. On constructing a remedial statute, the courts ought to give it 'the widest operation' which the language of statute will permit. Courts exist only to see that a particular case is within the mischief to be remedied and whether it falls within the language of the enactment. There are various examples of remedial statutes which are discussed below along with the case laws:

The labour and welfare legislations: These legislations should be construed broadly and liberally and while construing them due regard to the Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) of the Constitution of India and to any international convention on the subject must be given by the courts. In case of MC Mehta v. State of Tamil Nadu AIR 1991 SC 417, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 was construed.

The Court, having regard to the Directive Principles in Articles 39(e), 39(f), 4(i), 45 and 47 of the Constitution, the fundamental rights in Art. 24, United nation convention on the rights of the child, not only directed a survey of child labour and its prohibition but also directed payment in monetary terms as contribution by the employer to the Child Labour-Rehabilitation-cum-Welfare Fund to the parent/guardian of the child to ameliorate poverty and lack of funds for welfare of the child.

Social benefit oriented legislations: These legislations are to achieve the purpose of the enactment but without any violence to the language.. It has been held that a law enacted essentially to benefit a class of persons considered to be oppressed may be comprehensive in the sense that to some extent it also benefits those not within that class, for example, tenants and landlords.

The Control of Rent and Eviction Act which drastically limits the grounds on which a tenant can be evicted is essentially to benefit the tenants but it is also to some extent benefit the landlord, who can file a suit for eviction on the grounds mentioned in the Act even though the tenancy has not been terminated in accordance with the provisions of the Transfer of Property Act, 1956.

When contracts and transactions are prohibited by statutes for the sake of protecting one class of persons, the one from which situation and condition being liable to be oppressed and imposed upon by the other, the parties are not in pari delicto and a person belonging to the oppressed class can apply for redress even if he was a party to a contract or transaction prohibited by the statute.

Penal Statutes

A principle stating that, a statute enacting an offence or imposing a penalty is to be strictly construed, is not of universal application, though it must necessarily be observed in every case. It is now only of limited application and it serves in the selection of one when two or more constructions are reasonably open.

The rule was originally evolved to mitigate the rigour of monstrous sentences for trivial offences and although that necessity and that strictness have now almost vanished, the difference in approach made to a penal statute as against any other statute still persists. The settled rule of construction of penal sections is that 'if there is a reasonable interpretation which will avoid the penalty in any particular case we must adopt that construction.

If there are two reasonable constructions we must give the more lenient one.' Interpretation of penal provisions must be in consonance with the principles underlying fundamental rights. Any provision which finds an accused with adverse consequences without affording him any remedy to disprove an item of evidence which stands against his innocence, is inconsistent with the philosophy enshrined in Article 21. It was held by the Supreme Court that the courts should interpret such a provision as to dilute it and to make it amenable to Article 21 of the Constitution.

Failure to comply with a statute may attract penalty. But only because a statute attracts penalty for failure to comply with the statutory provisions, the same in all situations would not call for a strict construction. An interpretation which strikes a balance between enforcement of law and protection of valuable human right of accused (right of privacy) must be resorted to. Provisions of Evidence Act, 1872, state that the burden to prove that the case of the accused falls within an exception to a statutory offence, lies on him.

But the question whether the defence set up by an accused is really a defence of an exception or a defence setting up non-existence of a fact which is an ingredient of the offence to be proved by the prosecution, depends upon the construction of the particular statute. In applying and interpreting a penal statute, public policy is also taken into consideration