Yeah, like I said, superhero comics are a poor basis by which to discuss RPG alignments 
FWIW, I’m currently DMing a group of terminally LG folks (all devouts of Erastil, who’s basically the god of old-fashioned patriarchy) trying to set up an orderly kingdom in a no man’s land full of feys. They’ve been trying to teach the fey (as well as a tribe of unruly, sometimes cannibalistic kobolds) how to be good, productive members of society instead of playing disruptive pranks.
I’m not sure they quite grok what feys are :).
I’d say Bats is firmly in the Lawful Neutral category. He enjoys breaking the bones of “criminals” a little too much to be anywhere close to good. I mean, he talks a great game about doing it all for the good of Gotham and whatnot, but ultimately his paranoid crusade is about working through his own scars and, basically, a giant personal vendetta. One that keeps creating more targets to vendetta against.
The man has issues.
(plus as many have pointed out, he’d do a whole lot more for Gotham if he dedicated his entire fortune to solving Gotham’s various societal ills instead of high tech toys. E.g. by giving the various petty crooks he enjoys sending to the hospital every night productive jobs instead)
Here’s a different angle on it: Lawful Good people should obey the law because they’re Lawful, right? By that logic, *all *Lawful characters obey the law, which means that there are no Lawful Evil criminals. Does that seem right to you? Because my adventures have always teemed with LE crime bosses, LE hit men and LE infernal cult leaders.
In other words, the connection between Lawful and the law is not that straightforward.
This was mostly LG characters in their own LG-adjacent localities in the Outlands. Gate towns and the like. Or LG law enforcement types in Sigil.
That saying about the road to Hell might as well be engraved on the eyelids of LG law enforcement. You can argue for mitigation at trial, not while being apprehended…which was when most of the LG-CG fights broke out.
You think the LG characters should have been lenient on the CGs from the get-go. As though they had any special skill at reading intent.
I, as DM, thought the CG characters should have gone quietly and explained it all to the judge.
The difference is in what kind of laws they want, to which end, not in how they apply them once they’re in place (or else there’s no such thing as LG, either, in 2nd Ed.)
LG characters want just laws, that protect the weak and punish the evil. They will apply such laws because they believe they meet that end. If laws aren’t just, they will move to change them. But “I know better” or “I had a good motive” is no excuse for breaking laws that they do consider just. That’s their call to make, not the CG character’s
LN want laws for the sake of order, want every aspect of life to be covered by rigid order. The morality of the laws isn’t significant. Just that there are laws.
I disagree. The way I’ve always seen it, alignments are not absolute, but rather points on a sliding scale, with LG lying halfway between LN (obedience to the law) and NG (compassion and empathy), and containing elements of both. The philosophy you’re describing, I’d put at LG(N) (or LN(G), whatever).
I see it more as LG people prefer to use laws as their mechanism for ensuring everyone stays Good, as opposed to their conscience or … whatever NG people do (toss coins? I don’t know, I tend to ignore Neutral <Moral> as unwieldy concepts in play).
Whereas I see LN as halfway between LG (just laws) and LE (unjust laws)
I see,for instance - modern Nordics as LG, modern US as LN, Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa as LE
You seem to see Lawful Good as a form of moral cowardliness - following laws because you’re unwilling to think for yourself. Personally, I’m pretty sure that LG people listen to their conscience. More importantly, LG people follow their principles, which are laws they decide upon themselves.
As for societies, I think it’s more -
LG: the law serves the people;
LN: the law is necessary for an orderly society;
LE: the law serves those in power.
By that logic, I can’t see how, say, LG beings would ever use lethal force against other Good beings, even if they happened to be Chaotic. That would be the ends justifying the means, which is not any form of Good.
I find that interesting, seeing that IMHO most actual human beings, with all of their complexity, are Neutral Good - fundamentally decent beings, torn between doing what they’re supposed to do and doing what they want to do. Most people aren’t radicals, after all.
This presupposes that LGs have no input into the laws, and no choice which laws they choose to live under. Neither was true in my games.
No, that’s Chaotic Good. Principles are not laws. The difference is that laws apply to everyone.
Good people sometimes do bad things.
Sometimes, those bad things include resisting arrest with lethal force. Sure, that’s actually an alignment shift-type thing. But I’m not going to change someone’s alignment in the middle of combat. So a CG player swings a sword at a LG guard, the guard is justified in using lethal force back.
Plus, no, in a medieval setting, views on lethal force are not the same as modern views. I would see nothing wrong with two LG religions going to war in a game, for instance.
All that’s compounded in Planescape, a setting where you can visit the places that “dead” people go and interact with them still - “lethal” force can be a very different animal on the Planes.
That’s not the ends justify the means.
It’s perfectly possible to have a LG setting that nevertheless has capital punishment for, say, major theft.
It’s also possible to have a CG character who misguidedly thinks stealing something valuable is the only way to accomplish a good goal. And who, because they’re being played by an idiot, makes a hash of their court defence.
It would not be a violation of their own LG ethics for that character to be executed by a LG NPC lawperson. Based on the facts available to the NPC, not those known to me as DM.
IME, most human beings are CN on the inside, and LN in public (and that’s how I stat most NPCs). I no longer believe in the fundamental decency of the masses. Humans are, on the main, just selfish children.
Note, though, that I don’t equate CN with crazy anarchic Xaositects - Planescape’s one big failing.
Cap’s experiences in the MCU (especially with regard to Hydra) were changing him from Lawful Good to Neutral Good and distrustful of authority.
Conversly, guilt pulled Tony Stark more and more from Neutral to Neutral Good to Lawful Good over the course of his films.
Even in his first MCU outing, isn’t he the guy who lies to the draft board so he can serve his country, and then disobeys an order so he can go liberate some POWs?
No, both sides of the Lawful spectrum see the value in order and structure in society. LG sees the laws as a mechanism to promote fairness and safety in society, LE sees it as a mechanism to exploit. A Lawful Evil person uses loopholes in the law, bribes, etc to enrich themselves at the expense of others – or perhaps is powerful enough to use the law to crush and oppress others. But they still see structure and law as integral to the process and wouldn’t want to live in a chaotic, anarchic society. In modern terms, you might bribe officials to change regulations allowing you to pour toxins into the orphan’s duck pond but you wouldn’t want a world where people could respond with a looting mob that burns your factory down. I suppose the common comic book version is Lex Luthor vs Joker (until someone invariably tells me about a story where the Joker becomes prime minister or something)
I assume Neutral Good people just don’t care provided that you’re doing good, caring for people, promoting welfare, etc. Lawful people feel that laws and structure are the best way to help the most people and preserve their rights, Chaotic Good people feel that laws stifle or crush the ability to just “do good” and that individual liberty is essential for doing the most good. NG doesn’t think it’s a debate worth having and you should just seek to do good where you can.
While it’s fun to assign alignments to societies, those whom you might regard as evil wouldn’t see themselves as evil, and would regard you as evil. US politics boils down to one side in power over the other, with both sides regarding the other as evil for purposes of winning elections. Politics create strange bedfellows, such as ultraconservative Jesse Helms being friends with liberal icon Bono. Behind the scenes, they smoke expensive cigars together. Plus, our president is definitely CE. Maybe most of his party are LN, but they side with him when they both want the same things.
So, in real life, law vs. chaos still takes a back seat. 
If memory serves, there was one arc where he managed to get himself appointed ambassador to the UN on behalf of Iran, which meant all of his crimes fell under diplomatic immunity.
It was as dumb as it reads. It got dumber still.
A lawful character might prefer to follow the law, and to change the law if it’s a bad one, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll always follow the law no matter what. To use the extreme example, at least some of the folks in Nazi Germany who were helping Jews escape and lying to the authorities about it were Lawful Good. They didn’t just shrug and say “Well, I voted against killing all the Jews, but the other side had the majority, so that’s the law, and nothing I can do about it”.
What if they’re Lawful Stupid? Huh? Huh?
That was the same arc where he murdered Robin.
Nobody is their alignment 100% of the time.
Rubbish. If the Nazis and the Apartheid government didn’t know they were doing evil, they wouldn’t have tried to hide their worst actions, even from their own people.