The rules which rules of recognition require officials to (p.

147) apply are not confined to rules

addressed to those very same officials. They apply to such rules but also to many other rules addressed
to ordinary individuals (directing them to pay their taxes, not to assault other individuals, to keep
their contracts, etc.) as well as rules granting powers and permissions to individuals. A rule of
recognition is not a second-order reason requiring the officials to regard some other rules as their
norm subjects should. It requires the officials to treat these rules as valid when using their powers to
issue authoritative applicative determinations, for example, not to pay taxes as if the tax law applies to
them but to declare that x, who is subject to the law, ought to pay the tax or that he has failed to pay
the tax owed, etc.
The second proposition is clearly true. It is a direct consequence of the fact that institutionalized
systems have primary organs with power to settle disputes concerning the application of their norms.
This entails that such systems contain norms addressed to the primary organs requiring them to apply
certain normsand these are rules of recognition. There is no reason, on the other hand, to assume
that a legal system can contain only one rule of recognition. The unity of the system does not depend
on its containing only one rule of recognition. The unity of the system depends on the fact that it
contains only rules which certain primary organs are bound to apply. The primary organs which are to
be regarded as belonging to one system are those which mutually recognize the authoritativeness of
their determinations. Some remarks in The Concept of Law suggest that Hart regards it as essential
that the different criteria of validity will be ranked to prevent the possibility of conflicts between
equally valid rules. But there is no reason to believe that valid norms belonging to one system cannot
conflict (cf. p. 145).10 We should, therefore, conclude that, though every legal system must contain at
least one rule of recognition, it may contain more than one.
Must rules of recognition be customary rules practised by the officials of the system? The answer is
obviously yes if the system under consideration is in force, for it is part of the test for a systems being
in force that primary organs apply its rules, which entails that if it is in force then its primary organs
practise and follow its rules of recognition.
That the primary organs follow and apply the rules of recognition does not entail that they hold them
to be morally justified. This thesis of Harts has been so often overlooked or misinterpreted that one
cannot repeat it often enough. It is normal to find that some at least of the subjects of an
institutionalized system hold it to be morally (p.148) justified. It is even more common to find that
many of its officials share this view. But it is of great importance to remember that these facts though
common and widespread are not logically necessary. Moreover, it is not only logically possible but also
not uncommon for an official of the system to follow its rules of recognition without regarding them as
morally justified. In the first place, that a rule is followed by a person requires only that he holds it to
be valid, i.e., believes that the norm subjects are justified in following itjustified, perhaps, only
because it already exists and is practised and despite the fact that it should not have been made and
that it should even now be changed. Moreover, the official may follow the rule either without having
any beliefs about why he is justified in doing so, or for prudential reasons (his best way of securing a
comfortable life or of avoiding social embarrassment, etc.), or even for moral reasons which are based
on his moral rejection of the system. An anarchist, for example, may become a judge on the ground
that if he follows the law most of the time he will be able to disobey it on the few but important
occasions when to do so will tend most to undermine it. Another may become a judge because he
holds that he is justified in applying the law of which he disapproves when he is bound to do so if he
makes good use of the powers judges have to make new laws and change existing laws on occasion.

Finally, though it is true that legal systems contain all the rules of recognition which apply to their
primary organs and all the rules which these require the primary organs to apply, they may contain
other rules as well. Basically (and subject to the modification introduced in the next section) an
institutionalized system consists of the norms its primary organs are bound to apply. These include,
first, all the norms addressed to them and, secondly, all the rules addressed to ordinary individuals
which the primary organs are required to apply by norms addressed to them. The second class of
norms consists of the norms identified by the rules of recognition of the system. The first class
includes rules of recognition but may include other norms as well. There is no reason why an
institutionalized system should not include rules addressed to its officials even though they are neither
rules of recognition nor rules identified by the rules of recognition. The only limitation is that if the
system in question is in force then those rules must not only be addressed to the primary organs, they
must also be followed by them.