The overall tone of the passage is _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Laws directly tell us how to behave (or not to behave) under various specific circumstances and prescribe remedies or punishments for individuals who do not comply with the law. It can be defined as a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. Legal principles are often derived from ethical ones, but legal principles deal more with the practical regulation of morality, or behaviours and activities. Additionally many legal principles deal with the inadequacies and imperfections in human nature, and the less than ideal behaviours of individuals or groups. Legal practices are also affected more by historical precedent, matters of definition, issues related to detectability and enforceability and evolution of new circumstances than are ethical ones.

Law is also defined as a body of enacted or customary rules recognized by a community as binding. The law of the Medes and the Persians were regarded as unalterable. While in ancient times the king laid down the law and the people implicitly obeyed him, in modern times laws are made by legislatures, popularly elected or partially nominated. These laws, whatever their source, are binding injunctions; if they were not binding and if their compliance with them were not obligatory, they would not be laws but mere wishes which could be treated as optional. It is the element of compulsion that distinguishes a law from an ordinary directive or expression of desire. Laws enacted by legislatures have also to be distinguished from laws of nature that indicates regularity and invariable sequence between specified conditions and specified phenomena.

All man–made laws are designed to regulate human conduct in the interest of society. In absence of such rules each person would regard himself free to do what he likes, regardless of impact of his actions on others' corresponding right of freedom of action. In fact, the very existence of society would be endangered if there were no universally recognized laws. A lawless society would mean endless confusion, possibly a reign of terror, and might result in a terrible mess where the only effective law of the jungle. Before regular laws were enacted and enforced, might was right: the physically stronger individual dominated the set–up and the weak person had perforce to surrender to the wishes of the might one or get destroyed. Laws thus enforce justice; provide equal rights and opportunities to everyone, weak or strong, male or female, rich or poor.