Are we free? What determines how we live and who chooses to decide the outcome of our lives? If we believe in fate, then things happen because they are meant to happen, it's all part of a big plan. Thus, how free are we to decide our fate? If we believe in "free will" then we are in charge of our destiny and thus make us free. We are free to logically decide to choose. Only the human animal can do this and this gives us real freedom.
Once we have this freedom, we must be able to control it by rules because too much freedom can have a negative effect. This is why man named these rules - laws. For our society to progress we must follow rules to act like civilized people. Who governs us? If we go back to Plato's Republic, to paraphrase Plato, he stated that each individual in a republic has a job to perform, a duty. So we elect in a democracy a person to govern us and protect our rights. How is this all done? Because we have free will and this determines our fate. In his book, The Enterprise of Law Malcolm Clark explains that "a legal society does not abandon itself to its officials but keeps them under supervision through complex institutions of sustained criticism". Thus, who governs us tell us a lot about who we are because we usually put individuals in positions of power who represent our needs. .
So it is clear to make the distinction that for a society to be free it needs law to govern it. If we did not have rules, we would be no different than animals in a jungle. The law gives us this protection and enables us to deal with all problems of mankind and reach a solution for what is the law but a way to conduct ourselves and be able to ascertain the good against the bad.
Finally Fuller in his book The Morality of Law explains that "at a basic level, law involves the morality of duty. We either succeed or fail in reciprocity by which one person recognizes another to form a community of rational beings".
