difference between process and procedure

Knowledge

2022

We explain the difference between process and procedure through examples in everyday life, in law and their similarities.

The process is a global set, while the procedure is the steps to follow.

What is the difference between process and procedure?

If we look up the terms in a dictionary process Y process, we will see that they have very close but different meanings, even in colloquial language. The main difference between the two words is that a process encompasses the successive stages that make up a phenomenon or an operation, while a procedure designates the methodology applied to do something.

It is not unusual for the difference between the two terms to be confusing, or to be used interchangeably, as if they were synonymous. This is because they share etymology: both are forms of Latin I will proceed ("Advance", "march forward"), which at some point in the history of language separated and began to denote different referents.

Thus, the process preserved the global sense of the march or the road (also present in the religious procession, which is a slow march through the city with the cult icons on their shoulders), while the procedure focused on how the march is carried out. , that is, in what is the scheme, the method according to which to proceed.

Thus, for example, if we imagine a cooking recipe, we understand as a process the global set of actions that will lead us to prepare a delicious dish, while we will call the differentiated steps that allow us to start that process procedure.

The first has general, dynamic and managed stages, while the second involves specific, static or invariable steps, which are always part of a process. Thus, every procedure necessarily integrates a process, but not every process implies an established procedure.

This difference is even more important in the fields of right, where process is equivalent to the jurisdictional action itself, that is, to the litigation or lawsuit that resolves the authorities of public power judicial through the application of law.

A lawsuit for breach of contract it is a process, and as such it requires the fulfillment of a series of specific steps to carry it out: these steps make up the procedure. If the latter is not carried out rigorously, the whole process will be affected and flawed, and it will not be possible. Justice.

Thus, in the case of the lawsuit for breach of contract, the different steps that justice must follow: assign lawyers, hold a prior hearing, etc., make up the due procedure.

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