LAWS ARE THEY IMPORTANT?

A book without characters is a country without laws, well according to me laws and rules are a characteristic of a normal country, some have more brutal than others. My aim is to answer a question why do civilizations have laws? I think laws are written to protect people from being harmed by others. Without them some people might take advantage and do the wrong things and this would change the condition of both the Economy and the Government of the country. Something else is that these rules give people encouragement to think before doing something wrong, without those people would not consider for the circumstances and do what they desire. A thought that struck me was that laws and rules aren’t only for discipline but also for human rights, i.e. a needy kill’s his wife; he will probably be executed. But if a well of man kill’s his wife he would probably bribe the authorities and they would release him. Without human rights the country would not have a balance of people. Hammurabi’s laws were much intense than the ones today. Observing the codes on the following website http://www.phillipmartin.info/hammurabi/hammurabi_codeindex.htm (website found by Riley Petty) some of them are as clear as water example; If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out meaning an eye for an eye. And another thing I discovered was woman were treated (and still are in some countries) brutally. Example If a “sister of a god” opens a tavern, or enters a tavern to drink; then this woman shall be burned to death. Harsh isn’t it and in some countries still girls get married when they are 12 or 13, but this is getting illegal in some countries. Another example is child labor and child abuse, in countries such as India and Indonesia (that I know of) it is normal, but a law is going against it in both countries. A question I had was why did Hammurabi have rules based on really specific scenarios? I think that his laws were too harsh and some of them were unfair. That is what I think about this topic… and I really support the idea of laws.