The problems of the unity of matter and form were actualized within the framework of philosophical science as early as the middle of the fourth century in the writings of Aristotle. As it developed, Aristotle's theory acquired modern content and began to be applied not only to philosophy and physics, but also to an unlimited list of scientific investigations, including the humanities.

Studies of the issues of unity of matter and form in legal science have gained their theoretical and legal significance as a result of the separation of procedural branches from their original source. In the context of this article, the signs of contradictions in the structure of unity of matter and form are particularly evident in the unity of criminal, criminal procedural and criminal executive branches of law of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The idea of preserving the unity of matter and form is the key one in the methodology of law. However, modern sustainable autonomous development of material and formal branches of law leads to the fact that signs of unity of respective branches more and more become estranged from each other. As a result of such a distance, problems associated with inappropriate attempts to universalize certain signs, previously inherent only in matter or only in form, emerge. The result of such attempts is confusion in conceptual and terminological apparatuses, categories and institutes, which originally served the needs of material or procedural branches of law. Such phenomena entail destructurization of branch systems of law.