The rules set by written laws, ordinances and court rulings, plus long-accepted unwritten rules (customary law). It is usually backed by sanctions and enforceable in court, regulates behaviour rather than attitudes, and works through external pressure.

Its features:

• Sources: written statutes, ordinances and court decisions, and customary law (Gewohnheitsrecht): rules followed generally and for a long time without ever being written down.
• Enforcement: usually backed by sanctions and enforceable before a court.
• Object: it regulates the individual's behaviour in society, not their attitude. The law does not care whether you want to steal, only whether you do.
• Aim: order and security in society.
• Effect: external. It shapes behaviour through outside pressure (fear of punishment).

Contrast this with the sense of justice (next card), which works from the inside.

Go deeper:

• Wikipedia: Customary law — how unwritten rules become binding law.

Ethical considerations often guide lawmaking, but the legislature regulates behaviour and is not interested in motives. Only when the law is broken does a court weigh the motives. A law felt to be immoral must be changed through legal channels, not by disobeying it.

• Lawmaking: passing laws is often driven by ethical considerations. In Switzerland, parliament (the legislature) makes the political trade-off.
• Relief from case-by-case decisions: laws spare the courts (the judiciary) from having to decide every case from scratch.
• Legal certainty: laws make outcomes predictable, so people can plan.
• Motives: the legislature only regulates behaviour. The court looks at motives only after the law has been broken, e.g. when it sets the sentence.
• Immoral laws: they must be changed through the legal process, not by refusing to follow them.

Go deeper:

• Wikipedia: Separation of powers — why the legislature makes laws and the judiciary applies them.