Law and ethics are considered to be the two tools for controlling human conduct so as to make it conducive to civilized social existence. (a) Discuss how they achieve this objective. (b) Giving examples, show how the two differ in their approaches.

(a) How law and ethics control conduct

Both are instruments of social control that make human conduct conducive to civilised coexistence, but they work through different mechanisms. Law lays down codified, enforceable rules backed by the coercive authority of the state; the threat of sanction — fine, imprisonment, civil liability — deters harmful behaviour and provides certainty, uniformity and redress. Ethics operates from within, through internalised moral values, conscience and the pressure of social approval and disapproval. It guides conduct even where no law watches, cultivating self-restraint and a sense of right and wrong. Law secures the minimum external order; ethics builds the inner disposition that makes such order self-sustaining.

(b) How their approaches differ

• Source and sanction: law flows from the state and is enforced by external coercion; ethics flows from conscience and society and is 'enforced' by guilt, shame or social censure.
• Scope: law prescribes a minimum, enforceable standard; ethics demands a higher, aspirational ideal.
• Nature: law is rigid and uniform; ethics is flexible and context-sensitive.

Examples: giving or taking dowry is both illegal and unethical; telling a hurtful lie or being ungrateful is unethical but not illegal; while non-violent civil disobedience against an unjust law — as in the freedom struggle — may be a legal violation yet an ethical act. Ideally, law should be the codification of a society's shared ethics, and the two should reinforce each other.