The phrase "act by the rules" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to following established guidelines or regulations in a particular context.
Example: "In our organization, it is essential to act by the rules to ensure fairness and transparency in all processes."
Alternatives: "adhere to the rules" or "follow the rules".
Unable to stop the Affordable Care Act by the normal rules of a democracy — e.g., the Supreme Court, or winning a national election — a core group of leading Republicans now plan to sabotage the law.
"I am forced to conclude," he wrote, "that those who find one such as I just too inconvenient, too difficult to define and contain, too ready to speak openly and plainly to you, too unwilling to act by the court rules your advisers and civil servants impose, have seized on this opportunity to sow distrust between us and render me unable to assist you".
An artefact can be evaluated by the standards applying to artefacts (say, beauty or ugliness), because its producer took herself to be guided, in the act of production, by the rules of her art (De bonitate, sect. 2, n. 17).
And if a person engages in other acts prohibited by the Rule, such as developing and employing a fraudulent scheme, the person would be primarily liable for that conduct.
Legal norms can be more or less general, or vague, in their definition of the norm-act prescribed by the rule, and the more general or vague they are, the more they tend to have those quasi-logical features Dworkin attributes to principles.
Following the implementation of the Directive by means of the Act, the rules set out in the Code have a statutory basis in relation to the United Kingdom and comply with the relevant requirements of the Directive.
But for most Americans, it's just, "Well, if they're going to be here, they have to act like citizens, and play by the rules that other citizens do".
This would, in time, abolish that part of barbarity and ignorance, for which our natives are so despised by all foreigners: this would bring them to think and act according to the rules of reason, by which a spirit of industry, and thrift, and honesty would be introduced among them.
"We expect our people to play by the rules and act with integrity," the SAC spokesman said.
Fanda (Vlastimil Brodsky), the incorrigibly irresponsible codger whose misbehavior in "Autumn Spring" is a canny strategy for warding off death, is one of those adorable but exasperating old folks who refuse to play by the rules or act their age.
