Practice

The form or mode of proceeding in courts of justice for the ehforce-inent of rights or the redress of wrongs, as distinguished from the substantive law which gives the right or denounces the wrong. The form, manner or order of instituting and conducting a suit or other judicial proceeding, through its successive stages to its end, in accordance with the rules and principles laid down by law or by the regulations and precedents of the courts. The term applies as well to the conduct of criminal actions as to civil suits, to proceedings in equity as well as at law, and to the defense as well as the prosecution of any proceeding.

See Fleischman v. Walker, 91 III. 321; People v. Contrai Pac. R. Co., 83 Cal. 393, 23 Pac. 303; Kring v. Missouri, 107 U. S. 221, 2 Sup. Ct. 448, 27 U Ed. 506; Opp v. Ten Eyck, 99 Ind. 351; Beardsley v. Littell, 14 Blatchf. 102, Fed. Cas. No. 1,185; Union Nat Bank v. Byram, 131 III. 92, 22 N. E. 842.

It may include pleading, but is usually employed as excluding both pleading and evidence, and to designate all the incidental acts and steps in the course of bringing matters pleaded tb trial and proof, and procuring and enforcing judgment on them.