People commonly refer to a good and docile person as "one who can live without laws." According to a western proverb, "good lawyers make bad neighbors." Thus it seems that the ordinary person does not view "law" as only a good thing.
Society, however, must carry on community life, and therefore needs standards and rules; in fact, laws have become indispensable in solving the disputes and quarrels that arise among different social constituents.
For this reason we have created various forms of laws to sustain the social base. Since we live in a "law-abiding society," we look to the law for final judgment in cases of arguments and conflicts. The solution of a dispute by law is thus a more positive attempt to settle a problem when compromise, arbitration or agreement has not produced results.
There is one more proverb to mention as a possible influence, the common European proverb "A good lawyer, an evil neighbour," which has been traced back to Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongue of 1611 (Cotgrave 1970, sub Avocat; see also Smith 1935, 12; Stevenson 1948, 1370; Apperson 1969, 353; Whiting 1977, 255; Mieder et al. 1992, 365). The early American minister and writer Cotton Mather stated in 1710: "There has been an old Complaint, That a Good Lawyer seldom is a good Neighbour," and Benjamin Franklin cited it in June 1737 in his Poor Richard's Almanack as "A good Lawyer, a bad Neighbour" (Brooks 1979, 50; see also Barbour 1974, 116; Whiting 1977, 355). The meaning of this proverb is that lawyers make bad neighbours because they might use their legal knowledge against a trusting neighbour. It exists also in a slightly expanded variant, "A good lawyer makes a bad neighbour" (Pickering 1997, 156).
