Chapter 5, Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules Summary and Analysis

Hart begins the chapter by (famously and significantly) distinguishing between primary and second rules. Rules of the first sort impose duties; rules of the second confer public and private powers. Primary rules apply to actions that involve movement or change in the physical world. Secondary rules apply to operations that apply to both movement and change and the creation and variation of duties and obligations. This distinction, Hart will show, makes sense of many difficulties heretofore unsolved in the theory of law.

Hart wants to explain how laws make human conduct obligatory. Obligation is not merely about what individuals believe themselves to be obliged to do but what they in fact must do to avoid doing wrong. Austin and others understand obligatoriness in...