Read and translate the text. The question “What is law?” has troubled people for many years

The question “What is law?” has troubled people for many years. An entire field of study known as jurisprudence (the study of law and legal philosophy) is devoted to answering this question. Many definitions of law exist. For our purposes, however, law can be de­fined as the rules and regulations made and enforced by government that regulate the conduct of people within a society.

As a child, you learned about rules first at home and later at school. At home, your parents made and enforced rules concerning issues like chores and bedtimes. Rules made and enforced by the government are called laws. The government makes laws that affect almost every aspect of daily life.

One thing is certain: every society that has ever existed has recog­nized the need for laws. These laws may have been unwritten, but even pre–industrial societies had rules to regulate people’s conduct. Native American societies, for example, were governed by unwritten laws. When Europeans first arrived on the North American conti­nent, each of the Native American nations (or tribes, as they are commonly called today) maintained order through a system of un­written rules. Because many non–Native American government offi­cials and others did not see or understand these traditional mechanisms, many non–Native Americans held the erroneous view that the societies were lawless. Today, some Native American groups are still governed, at least in part, by traditional unwritten law.

Without laws, there would be confusion and disorder. This does not mean that all laws are fair or even good, but imagine how people might take advantage of one another without a set of rules.