Ebook: CIVIL PROCEDURE with Limitation Act,1963

Laws can be divided into two groups: (1) Substantive law, and (2) Adjective

or procedural law. Whereas substantive law determines rights and liabilities of parties, adjective or procedural law prescribes the practice, procedure and machinery for the enforcement of those rights and liabilities.

In Halsbury's Laws of England, it has been stated,

There is at the outset a vital and essential distinction between substantive law and procedural law. 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 ot legal duties. The function of procedural law is to provide the machinery or the manner in which the legal rights or status and legal duties may be enforced or recognised by a court of law or other recognised or properly

constituted tribunal."2 Procedural laws prescribe procedure for the enforcement of rights and liabilities. The efficacy of substantive laws, to a large extent, depends upon the quality of procedural laws. Unless the procedure is simple, expeditious