Oh, come on now. You can be informed on the ones that matter to you the most, and the ones which are most commonly broken, which says a lot about the society you live in. It's not that hard.

> I don't see why we should factor the law into discussions of ethics

Because laws, in many or most cases, reflect the moral or ethical views of a large number of people, or at least they did at the time they were passed. The fact that laws survived the lawmaking process at all means we should consider the thoughts that went into their creation. I'm not saying you should read every word of every statute. But a nation's laws are in many ways reflections of its cultural ethics.