I argue that the primary source of difficulties in characterizing fundamental normative authority is that the job-description of the fundamental normative system has been consistently mischaracterized.  The primary function of normative systems is not to tell us how we ought to behave. Rather, it is, more modestly, to place limits.  While normative systems generally – including the fundamental normative system – function as limit-placers on the choices of agents, what is distinctive about the fundamental normative system is that it also functions as a limit-placer on other normative systems.  My route into the issue of fundamental normative authority is via an ongoing debate between normative monists and normative pluralists.  Both sides share, fairly explicitly, a number of assumptions that obscure the notion of fundamental normative authority.  Once those assumptions are exposed as questionable, room is made for the limit-placing characterization I offer.  I will also defend the idea that there is a normative notion – I call it ‘practical rationality’ – that is fundamental.