ABSTRACT
Methodological legal positivism is the view that legal theory can and should offer a normatively neutral description of a particular social phenomenon, namely law. In the first edition of The Concept of Laws H. L. A. Hart offered an extended defense of what has become an extremely influential version of substantive legal positivism. The core of the substantive theory is the fairly straightforward idea that law consists of a union of two types of rules: secondary rules, which are rules that have been accepted as binding by judges and other officials, and primary rules, which are rules that have been identified as valid by a particular secondary rule called the rule of recognition. Hart analyzes obligation, including legal obligation, in terms of social rules. A social rule exists when the members of a group accept a general pattern of behavior as a common standard of conduct for all members of the group.
