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Rules Of Evidence -- Substantive Or Procedural?, Edmund M. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

It hardly needs stating that the definition of a legal word or term depends upon the purpose for which it is to be defined. If in framing a generalization designed to state a rule or make a discrimination applicable in a specific topic or field of the law, the courts use specified terms, it by no means follows that they intend those terms to be understood in the same sense in generalizations dealing with problems in another topic or field. The words, substance or substantive and procedure or procedural, have been used most frequently in three separate situations: (1) in …