Rules are what define human race. We always seem to have to have rules or at least a moral compass pointing a certain direction.
Human's in general have shown that if there is no social structure or there was no form of governing, Things go to hell pretty quickly. Even though we have laws nowadays there are still people who break the law. In every society, In every way of living, there is always at least one person who breaks a rule. Some rules that are broken are insignificant (like not lying) while other's are major (Like not going around murdering lots of people). In Gotham, there is crime everywhere; there is just to much for the police to handle (hence the need of Batman). Gotham also has to deal with all sorts of crazies that bring breaking the law to a whole new level. The prime example being The Joker; A brilliant, Psychotic clown that has filled graveyards. Somehow, he has not been given the death penalty.... Yet. He breaks pretty much every single law in existence, from breaking out of prison (repeatedly) to Jaywalking (Don't Do it Mistah J!).
The concept of Anarchy (No martial law and the people with the biggest guns rule) has been proven to not work. Also, some other concepts work in small scale test's while completely failing in the real world (The biggest one being Communism). Dictatorships leave people upset at not having any power; Same thing goes for overruling countries in the past (We are looking at you, England and America).
Most rules are somewhat reasonable and make commonsense. Abide by the rules of traffic, Don't Steal, Don't Murder, ect... Others are idiotic. For example, my school has a rule that we are not allowed to bring laptops into the school lunchroom (Safety of the Laptops). This rule makes no sense when you are sitting at a table by yourself with nobody sitting at the table next to you and there is no food or drink in the vicinity. This one really irks me. Oh well, I'll be out in a few month's. Anyway, as you all know;
Have a good night and terrible nightmares! :)