"substantive sense" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it in a variety of contexts such as when referring to a meaningful concept, or a sense of degree or importance. For example, "The article had a substantive sense of the history behind the topic."
The accusation against Ms Kagan's stance at Harvard never made much substantive sense.
"In the case of smallpox, there is no substantive sense of what kind of problem this is.
"There's a real tension here between running out after the first quote and getting some substantive sense of what's really going on in there," Ms. Buzbee said.
It remains an empirical question whether allowing for overlapping membership (where it makes substantive sense) can improve the modeling and explanation of those dynamics.
According to the descriptivist theory of indexicals under consideration, however, we said the same thing in this more substantive sense as well.
And these failures to assent to certain judgements is not the same as considering the two elements under consideration to be on a par in any substantive sense.
This study showed that in urban China's transition context, organization size is indeed another significant contributor to earnings inequality, in both statistical and substantive senses.
This example is used for illustrative purposes and is not intended to make any substantive biological sense.
The issue is not whether (V1) expresses a proposition; it clearly does, and it is, in this sense, "substantive".
The White House responded to Boehner's comments by insisting that the president was undeterred, and would pursue "common sense and substantive" executive action on immigration.
I had hoped for some real sense of substantive policy direction from the president — how he intends to use the Clean Air Act to deal with power plant carbon pollution.
