The pattern recognition rules are digitally encoded in the analysis software, simplifying and shortening the result reading.
Paradigmatic rule-obedience requires complex cognitive and conative capacities on the part of the agent: knowledge of the rule, recognition of the circumstances as appropriate to the application of the rule, and conative structures that motivate one to apply the rule and act on it.
In other words, there is nothing special in the idea of a legal obligation to follow the rules of recognition.
Similarly, the rules of recognition cannot settle for the judge, or anyone else for that matter, whether they should play by the rules of law, or not.
We saw that Hart tried to base the normative force of law on rules of recognition, which provide shared tests of validity for rules of the system.
If the rules of recognition are, indeed, of such a coordination kind, it is relatively easy to explain how they may give rise to obligations.
The rules of recognition only define what the practice is, and they can say nothing on the question of whether one should or should not engage in it.
From a moral point of view, the rules of recognition, by themselves, cannot be regarded as sources of obligation to follow the law.
So in order to meet Dworkin's challenge, Hart would have to show not only that rules of recognition (and other rules) may be vague, but that it can be reasonable to disagree over the application of such rules.
As Leslie Green observed, Hart's "view that the fundamental rules [of recognition] are 'mere conventions' continues to sit uneasily with any notion of obligation," and this Green finds troubling, because the rules of recognition point to the "sources that judges are legally bound to apply" (Green 1996, 1697).
