Hart's concept of law is a construction of these various distinctions. Primitive communities have only primary rules, and these are binding entirely because of practices of acceptance. Such communities cannot be said to have "law," because there is no way to distinguish a set of legal rules from amongst other social rules, as the first tenet of positivism requires. But when a particular community has developed a fundamental secondary rule that stipulates how legal rules are to be identified, the idea of a distinct set of legal rules, and thus of law, is born.

XREF: Connects to legal positivism, the separation between law and other social norms, and Hart's rule of recognition — likely relates to the reader's existing knowledge of jurisprudence or H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law. Builds on: "Lawful authority derives from prior rules, not raw power."

Ronald Dworkin, Ronald Dworkin - The Model …, loc. 59