Claim: Many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and the legal system.Reason: Laws cannot change what is in people's hearts or minds.

I agree with the author's statement that many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and the legal system.

What are laws? Laws can protect human rights from being violated and ensure the society to function effectively. Laws also supply ethical standards and expectations, providing rules of conduct and a means for settling disputes. It's important for a society to have laws to govern the actions of people and business, otherwise it would collapse.

However, laws and legal system is not an omniscient observer. American president once said that, ‘’ There is no capitalism without conscience; there’s no wealth without character.’’ Laws are regulated by people, so it is people’s mindset that let the society keep going. Laws can prevent problems like drunk driving, raping, or murder from happening again by enacting very serious consequences. For example, if a man is drunk driving and kill an innocent person, he should be put in jail for more than 5 years. In modern civilized society, most people can follow the rules that are beneficial to the society.

But the question is if laws can really regulate people’s behavior, why there are so many chaos in our society? In some cases, there are some laws that are obsolete and needed to be changed. For example, in India’s independence from Britain, the first law to be broken was the law that made it illegal to take salt from the ocean or from any source other than the British salt monopoly. It’s obvious that bad laws need to be changed.

Nonetheless, laws still hardly legislate away human immorality. We certainly need laws, but the cure comes not from laws but from the transforming of the human heart. With out individual conscience, society cannot be held in check except through coercion. But coercion could only lead to fail. In my opinion, the best way to solve this problem is by education. It’s important to teach children to discriminate what is right and what is right. Also, we need to focus on value education. Value education can aimed at the development of value and character; every thought of action leaves an impression on child’s mind.

Therefore laws cannot change what’s in people’s hearts and minds. Education can help an individual cultivate the personality positively. We can’t leave in a society without laws, but the most intractable social problems cannot be solved by policy but by only by the practice of moral behavior.