The idea of a rule, without which we cannot hope to elucidate even the most elementary forms of law. It is true that the idea of a rule is by no means a simple one: we have already seen if we are to do justice to the complexity of a legal system, to
discriminate between two different though related types. Under rules of the one type, which
may well be considered the basic or primary type, human beings are required to do or abstain
from certain actions, whether they wish to or not. Rules of the other type are in a sense
parasitic upon or secondary to the first; for they provide that human beings may be doing or
saying certain things introduce new rules of the primary type, extinguish or modify old ones,
or in various ways determine their incidence or control their operations. Rules of the first type
impose duties; rules of the second type confer powers, public or private. Rules of the first type
concern actions involving physical movement or changes; rules of the second type provide for
operations which lead not merely to physical movement or change, but to the creation or
variation of duties or obligations.
We have already given some preliminary analysis of what is involved in the assertion that
rules of these two types exist among a given social group, and in this chapter we shall not
only carry this analysis a little farther but we shall make the general claim that in the
combination of these two types of rule there lies what Austin wrongly claimed to have found
in the notion of coercive orders, namely, ‘the key to the science of jurisprudence.’ We shall
not indeed claim that wherever the word ‘law’ is ‘properly’ used this combination of primary
and secondary rules is to be found;

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