Pursuing the goal of forming us an overview about formation and principles of functioning of the modern criminal procedure, we proposed us to study its historical forms, emphaisizing their specifity. The criminal procedure evolved with the development of the human being. The way of the organisation of the act of justice, its component elements, the principles which were at the base, the status of the parties in the criminal proceedings, resulted from the vision of people about the world.With the widening of the horizon of knowledge of the human being, pressures were put on the criminal procedure, which don’t satisfied the conditions of the new societies, which determined the appearance and evolution of the following historical forms of the criminal procedure: accusatory, inquisitorial, mixed and adversarial.