Criteria for Separating Substantive Laws from Formal Laws in Terms of Goals, Characteristics and Function in Iranian Criminal Law

Many divisions of laws have been presented for a long time, one of the most important of which is the division of laws into substantive and formal. This division has its roots in the developments of Western Europe, including Roman law, which believed in the primacy of substantive law over procedural law. However, in the criminal systems, some distinctions have been accepted and a solution has been presented to enforce the laws to establish justice, respect the rights of the common people, and also to be the basis of the law. In Iran's criminal law, some distinctions have been raised by jurists and included in the law, but in some cases, the laws are similar. However, failure to resolve claims before referring to judicial institutions has led to ignoring the law, which causes problems related to proceedings. The question of the current research is, what are the criteria for separating the substantive laws from the form in terms of goals, features and functions in Iranian criminal law? The answer that can be given is that the criminal law system considers the goals of the substantive laws to be the originator of the right, dependent on the values ​​and norms of the society and a basis for the formation of laws. In contrast to formal laws, their purpose is to enforce the law, to restore the rights of the parties to the lawsuit, and they are considered a tool for the realization of substantive laws. In this article, the descriptive-analytical method is used.