I think a highly mobile society is partly to blame for the reliance on public law. A lot of people don't have historical ties to the communities in which they live, so the means for maintaining social order tends to shift towards what is most impersonal, public law.

I still live in a town that still has some generational families, and where I have a lot of extended family, including second and third cousins. There's a lot of deep lore, but there's also a lot of love. Most of my clients have some connection to my family through some line of relationships, and this make the relationship more than merely professional. They're not just people who walk through your door and pay money. They're story is in part my story and there's some force there that wants to maintain the "diginity" of that story. Both sides humanize each other and treat each other with respect.

On the otherhand, those who don't have that common history tend to treat me as some atomized cog that they has to do their bidding because I'm being paid. It's often, though not always, very cold and impersonal.

It's actually caused me to be somewhat xenophobic, but not based on race or ethnicity, but on whether the person is a "local."

And I'm not saying it's always the case that a "new comer" is cold or unfriendly. Rather, that there is something very different when you share a history with another. That alone helps to maintain social order to a large extent through the dignifying of that history.