The doctrine of the proper law is applied in the choice of law stage of a lawsuit involving the conflict of laws. Explanation When the jurisdiction is in dispute, one or more state laws will be relevant to the decision-making process. If the laws are the same, this will cause no problems, but if there are substantive differences, the choice of which law to apply will produce a different judgment. Each state, therefore, produces a set of rules to guide the choice of law, and one of the most significant rules is that the law to be applied in any given situation will be the proper law. This is the law that seems to have the closest and most real connection to the facts of the case, and so has the best claim to be applied. The term "proper" refers back to the older English sense as being "proper to". In other words, the law proper to the contract or the contractual term or issue involved. All laws, to a greater or lesser extent, are reflections of the public policies of the state that enacted them. The more important the policy to the society, the greater the claim of the relevant law to be applied. Thus, if laws exist to protect citizens, the law of the place where loss or damage is sustained might have a strong claim to apply: e.g. in a traffic accident, two cars collide because of faulty maintenance and both drivers are injuredthe local laws exist to provide some degree of protection for all those who use the roads in that state, setting minimum standards for the design and maintenance of vehicles, specifying what levels of insurance should be carried, setting the minimum age and qualifications for the right to drive, etc. But the problem with accepting the claim of anyone state to have its law apply is that the result may be somewhat arbitrary. So, in the example given, if neither driver had a residence in the state, and the cars were both maintained outside the state, the laws of other states may have an equal or better claim to apply. The advantage of the proper law approach is that it builds in flexibility rather than offering a mechanical rule. Suppose that there is a contract between an Italian company and an English partnership for the sale of goods made in Greece to be shipped