# The Anatomy of a Legal Norm

Law I · Foundations of Law · https://tryals.app/learn/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm

## Describing and Prescribing

Language does more than report. "The window is shut" describes. "Shut the window" prescribes.

The first can be true or false. The second cannot. **The** key consequence is clear: **a norm is not true or false, it is valid or invalid**.

This forces a crucial distinction:

- A **norm** prescribes conduct: "drivers must stop at a red light".
- A **normative proposition** describes a norm's existence: "in **Spain**, drivers must stop at a red light". It can be true or false.

### The elements of a norm

**Georg Henrik von Wright** gives the standard analysis. **Three** elements form the **normative nucleus**:

| Element | What it fixes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| **Character** | Obligatory, prohibited, or permitted | *Must* |
| **Content** | The action or omission itself | *Stop* |
| **Condition of application** | The circumstances where it operates | *At a red light* |

Around the nucleus sit other elements:

- The **authority** who issues the norm.
- The **subject** addressed by the norm.
- The **occasion** in space and time.
- The **promulgation** of the text.
- The **sanction** for non-compliance.

### Primary and secondary norms

**Hart** sets out his theory in *The Concept of **Law***. For him, **primary rules** impose duties on citizens. Meanwhile, **secondary rules** govern the primary rules.

Secondary rules include:

- The **rule of recognition**, which identifies what counts as law.
- The **rules of change**, which govern how norms are made and repealed.
- The **rules of adjudication**, which empower judges to decide disputes.

A legal system is the **union of primary and secondary rules**.

**Kelsen** uses the terms differently. For him, the norm directed to officials is primary. The rule for citizens is secondary.

### Validity, efficacy, applicability

Four properties must be kept distinct:

- **Validity**: membership in the legal system.
- **Vigencia**: being formally in force after publication.
- **Efficacy**: being obeyed and applied in practice.
- **Applicability**: governing a particular case.

For **Kelsen**, legal validity ends in a presupposed **basic norm**.

For **Hart**, validity rests on the rule of recognition as an observable **social practice**.

> **Common pitfall:** inferring that a norm is invalid because nobody obeys it. Disobedience makes a norm inefficacious. It remains valid until repealed.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Why can a norm be valid and almost wholly ineffective at the same time?

A. Because validity concerns the authority enacting the rule, whereas efficacy requires judicial review
B. Validity is membership of the system, settled by how the norm entered it; efficacy is a fact about behaviour
C. Because validity is fixed upon promulgation, but efficacy only commences once the norm is enforced by judges
D. Because validity depends purely on the sanction attached, whilst efficacy requires widespread voluntary obedience

**Answer:** B. Validity is membership of the system, settled by how the norm entered it; efficacy is a fact about behaviour

**Why:** Because they are claims about **different things**. Validity asks how the norm entered the system — competent organ, correct procedure, no conflict with a higher norm — and is settled by tracing its pedigree. Efficacy asks what people do, and is settled by observation. A competently enacted rule that everyone ignores scores full marks on the first and near zero on the second.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/why-can-a-norm-be-valid-and-almost-wholly-ineffective-at-the-same

### 2. A legal norm is not true or false, but valid or invalid. What follows from this distinction when an observer states what the law requires in a given country?

A. She reproduces the exact validity of the norm within her description
B. She issues a new prescriptive norm that demands compliance from all
C. She states a proposition about a norm, which is itself true or false
D. She demonstrates that the underlying norm is wholly inefficacious now

**Answer:** C. She states a proposition about a norm, which is itself true or false

**Why:** Confusing the statement of a norm with the norm itself treats external reporting as lawmaking. An observer does not enact or validate rules; she asserts descriptive facts about existing valid norms, making her statement truth-apt.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/a-legal-norm-is-not-true-or-false-but-valid-or-invalid-what-follows

### 3. Complete the anatomy of the norm.

**Answer:** A sentence that prescribes cannot be true or false, only **valid**. A sentence describing the existence of a norm is a normative **proposition**, and that one can be true or false. Hart calls the rule identifying what counts as law in a system the rule of **recognition**. Kelsen closes the chain of validity with a presupposed **basic** norm.

**Why:** The last two blanks name the same problem and two different answers. Every chain of validity has to stop somewhere; Kelsen stops it at a norm that is **presupposed** by legal thought, and Hart at a rule that is **practised** by officials and can be observed. One is a postulate, the other a social fact, and the difference is the whole quarrel between them.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/complete-the-anatomy-of-the-norm

### 4. For Hart, a rule of recognition is a secondary rule.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True.** Secondary rules are rules about rules, and the rule of recognition is the one that says what counts as law in the system at all. It sits alongside rules of change, which govern how norms are made and repealed, and rules of adjudication, which govern who decides disputes and by what procedure.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/for-hart-a-rule-of-recognition-is-a-secondary-rule

### 5. How many kinds of secondary rule does Hart distinguish?

**Answer:** 3

**Why:** **Three**: recognition, change and adjudication. Each answers a defect of a regime made only of primary rules, uncertainty about what the rules are, the static character of rules that can only change by slow custom, and the inefficiency of having no one authorised to settle whether a rule was broken.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/how-many-kinds-of-secondary-rule-does-hart-distinguish

### 6. Arrange these norms in the order Kelsen's chain of validity ascends.

**Answer:**

1. The individual norm in a judgment ordering a specific payment
2. The statutory article the judgment applies
3. The constitutional provision authorising that statute
4. The basic norm presupposed by legal thought

**Why:** The last step is the one doing the philosophical work. Every other link derives its validity from the link above; the chain has to stop, and Kelsen stops it at a norm nobody issued, presupposed in order that the rest may be understood as valid. Hart's alternative is to stop at something observable instead: what officials actually treat as law.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/arrange-these-norms-in-the-order-kelsens-chain-of-validity-ascends

### 7. Sort each sentence by whether it is a NORM, a NORMATIVE PROPOSITION, or neither.

**Answer:**

- A norm: Stop on red, No ex post pun.
- A normative proposition: In ES: stop, Art 9.3: no retro.
- Neither: Most stop, Retro feels bad

**Why:** The middle column is what textbooks are made of. The legislator issues norms; the scholar writes propositions about them, which can be true or false and can be got wrong. The third column is neither, it reports behaviour or attitudes, and belongs to the sociology of law rather than to dogmatics.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/sort-each-sentence-by-whether-it-is-a-norm-a-normative-proposition

### 8. Which are true of the properties a norm can have?

A. A norm can be valid before it is in force, during its vacatio legis
B. Efficacy admits of degrees, whereas validity does not
C. A repealed norm can still be applicable to facts that occurred while it was in force
D. Applicability and validity are the same property under two names

**Answer:** A. A norm can be valid before it is in force, during its vacatio legis; B. Efficacy admits of degrees, whereas validity does not; C. A repealed norm can still be applicable to facts that occurred while it was in force

**Why:** The second entry is the decisive counterexample to the fourth. A crime is judged under the code in force when it was committed, so a repealed article can be the **applicable** norm long after it has ceased to be a **valid** one. If the two were the same property, that everyday situation would be incoherent.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/which-are-true-of-the-properties-a-norm-can-have

### 9. In what year did Kelsen first publish the Pure Theory of Law?

**Answer:** 1934 (within ±5)

**Why:** **1934.** The date sits inside the same European crisis that produced Radbruch's later formula, and the two responses could not be further apart: Kelsen answered the collapse of legal certainty by purifying the theory of law of everything moral and political, and Radbruch answered it by letting justice override statute at the extreme.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/in-what-year-did-kelsen-first-publish-the-pure-theory-of-law

### 10. A normative proposition is itself a norm.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** "Drivers must stop at a red light" prescribes and is a norm; "in Spain, drivers must stop at a red light" reports that such a norm exists, and is true or false. Almost every sentence in a legal textbook is of the second kind, which is why textbooks can contain mistakes and statutes cannot.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/the-anatomy-of-a-legal-norm/a-normative-proposition-is-itself-a-norm