In national law, laws can be divided into substantive law laws and procedural law laws. Despite being a differentiation that is learned at the beginning of college, there are still some students and even legal professionals who, from time to time, get a little confused.
First, it should be noted that the Law will be considered material or procedural not by the place where it is provided, but by its content.
Material laws are those that are responsible for establishing the rules of social interaction, regulating the wide variety of legal relationships between people.
We can cite as a classic example the special part of the Penal Code , where there is a provision for acts considered as criminal and there is the establishment of penalties for those who practice these acts.
In the case of procedural law, we can say that it is the rules that regulate the exercise of jurisdiction. These are the rules that will regulate the operation of the process itself, establishing phases and procedures to be adopted in each of these phases.
We can cite as an example of procedural rule article 386 of the Criminal Procedure Code , which provides for cases in which the judge must acquit the defendant in a criminal action.
Identifying the rules of material and procedural content is extremely important because, depending on the nature of the rule, some peculiarities must be observed.
In Criminal Law, for example, the period provided for the substantive norm is counted differently from the period provided for the procedural norm.
In substantive law, the Penal Code provides that the periods will be counted in such a way that “The day of the beginning is included in the computation of the period. The days, months and years are counted by the common calendar.” ( CP , article 10 ).
In Procedural Law, the Criminal Procedure Code provides that “The start date will not be computed within the deadline, including, however, the expiration date.” (CPP, article 798, § 1)
Therefore, it is extremely important that the law professional and student know how to recognize the nature of the norm (whether material or procedural).
