Rules can keep people safe, and people have made rules for many reasons, and a seat belt is one example. A seat belt helps keep a person safe and secure inside a car. In a crash, an unbelted person keeps moving at the same travel speed until crashing into what is in front of them. A seat belt spreads crash forces across the stronger bones of the body: the shoulder, rib cage and pelvis. Wearing a lap and shoulder belt reduces the risk of fatal injury by 45 percent in a car and by 60 percent in an SUV, van or pickup. You may have heard that an air bag means a seat belt is not needed. In fact, air bags are built to work with seat belts, not replace them, and an unbuckled person can be hurt by the force of an air bag.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, estimates that seat belts saved 14,955 lives in 2017, and could have saved 2,549 more if those people had worn them. Most people buckle up, but some forget. As of November 2026, nearly half of the people who die in car crashes are not wearing a belt, and the national seat belt use rate in the United States was 91.3 percent in 2025. Seat belt laws raise belt use, especially when enforcement is publicized, and the strongest laws allow primary enforcement: police can stop a driver just for not using a belt. With secondary enforcement, police can enforce the belt law only if they stopped the driver for another violation first.
A traffic signal is a device used to control traffic. Signals mainly sit at city intersections, where they give each stream of traffic its turn to go. Safety rules say to stay out of traffic and to cross streets at crosswalks or intersections. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says keeping walkers safe is a shared job, and that pedestrians, drivers and everyone who uses the road have a responsibility. Traffic signs follow standards so drivers can recognize them fast. For example, stop signs always have a red background and are eight-sided.
A good rule is clear and open, so everybody can know what it is. Health groups say rules work best when they are clear and stay the same. They also say a rule should be explained in words a child can understand, and the CDC says to tell a child why a safety rule matters. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that families talk about their expectations and about reasonable consequences for not following family rules.
In 1891 a teacher named James Naismith invented basketball and wrote its first rules. He invented it as an indoor game to replace boring or dangerous exercises at his school. Naismith's original rules banned walking or running with the ball and limited physical contact. They are still the basis of basketball, and he was an educator at the YMCA Training School and the University of Kansas. He spread basketball's rules through the YMCA network, and the first games used half-bushel peach baskets as targets, so a stepladder was needed to get the ball out. His first class had 18 players, so the first games had 9 on each side. The number was later cut to 5.
Hammurabi was a king of Babylon who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BCE, and his legal decisions were collected and carved into a stone pillar, so people could see them. The Code of Hammurabi has 282 case laws, which cover prices and trade, marriage and divorce, theft and assault, and debt. You may have read that the Code of Hammurabi was the first written set of laws. In fact, it was built on Sumerian law that communities had lived under for many centuries, and the Sumerians had the earliest known law codes. In the Code of Hammurabi, penalties varied with the status of the offender and the circumstances of the offense. Modern rule-of-law ideals call for impartial treatment that does not consider class, status or power. A fair law is for everyone the same. Equality before the law means no one gets special privileges.
Tax increases under Richard I, from his Crusade, his ransom and his war with France, added to the nobles' discontent. King John of England granted Magna Carta, a charter of liberties, to his barons in 1215. He did so under threat of civil war. Magna Carta was reissued with changes in 1216, 1217 and 1225. You may have heard that it gave every person rights. When it was written, it secured only the rights of a privileged class of the king's subjects. Over centuries Magna Carta became an enduring symbol of liberty and the rule of law.
The rule of law is the idea that even a king is under the law. The rule of law means that no one, even the most highly placed official, is above the law, and that government is bound by existing laws as much as its citizens are. Law is the set of customs, practices and rules of conduct of a community that the community recognizes as binding, and it is enforced by a controlling authority. Ideas about the rule of law go back at least to the 4th century BCE, when Aristotle set the rule of law apart from rule by any one person.
In the 18th century the French thinker Montesquieu worked out a doctrine of the rule of law that set the lawful authority of monarchs against the caprice of despots. Under the rule of law, laws should be open, clear and knowable to all. People must be able to consult them before acting, and a person should not be punished under a law made after the act. Rule-of-law states usually keep judges separate from the people who hold power, so officials cannot interfere with court decisions. "The rule of law" is a different idea from "a rule of law." A rule of law is one particular legal rule, such as the rule that we must file our taxes by a certain date.
The rule of law is not a plan for building a state, but a value or set of values that can be pursued in many ways. Social contract thinkers include Hobbes, Locke, Kant and Rousseau, and their idea is that the rules we live under can be explained as an agreement among people. Social contract theories were most popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hobbes wrote in 1651 that without government there would be no enforceable right and wrong, and life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Locke wrote in 1690 that people leave the state of nature to form a commonwealth with an impartial power to settle disputes and fix injuries.
The United States Constitution begins with the words "We the People of the United States." It united its citizens as members of a whole and placed the power of the union in the people. The Constitution gives the power to make federal laws to Congress, which has a Senate and a House of Representatives. Article I lets Congress make all laws that are necessary and proper for carrying out its powers. A bill has to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate before it can become a law. The Constitution says bills for raising revenue must start in the House of Representatives. After a bill passes both chambers, the President has 10 days to sign or veto it.
Words to know
- enforcement: making people obey
- charter: written grant
- impartial: fair to everyone
- privileged: given special rights
- veto: refuse to sign
