Lawful - What ARE the laws?

[Zevox]

In order for one to be lawful there has to be laws to follow.

That is not actually true. The Lawful alignments are not based on following laws, they're based a person being generally the orderly sort - as just one small example, someone of a Lawful alignment would be more likely to stick to their word than deceive others, or on the more evil side of things more likely to twist the exact meaning of their words to their own advantage rather than lie outright. They're more likely to value concepts like honor or respect for/deference to those in authority, and less likely to value concepts like freedom or individualism. Those kind of personality traits are not tied specifically to any laws.

In practice, there is a good chance that a Lawful character will be inclined to uphold the laws of their homeland when they're in it, and to respect laws of other lands, but there can certainly be exceptions to that. A Lawful Good Paladin is not especially likely to want to follow laws that blatantly oppress the populace in a country ruled by an evil tyrant, for example, they're likely to want to overthrow him and get those laws thrown out for ones that are actually fair and just.

That said, the alignment system obviously has its flaws, and one of the more basic is that the name of the Lawful alignments does give the misconception that they're about following laws, when that's not really the case.