  Similar hypotheses would be germane to cases or institutional practice in general. For example that, because government ought to treat morally like alike when it exercises its coercive power, judicial decisions should stand; such that past decisions partly determine what rights and duties now obtain in circumstances similar to those of precedent cases in their morally relevant respects. Or, more abstractly, that, because government has a duty to bring its action under a coherent scheme of principle when it recognizes and enforces claims against some person, its institutional practice affects rights and obligations as certain principles dictate: namely the principles which together justify the practice’s having that role. In these examples, the moral facts that the principles express explain why and how the institutional action in question affects legal rights and duties and therefore the principles’ role is to assign to institutional practice, or any of its aspects, their own role in the explanation.