But other citizens challenged these rights claims in the interest of public health. Ultimately, the public health interest prevailed and the bathhouses were closed down. Throughout the controversy, however, the debate was structured by law and the language of law. These words are used to define societal relationships, but are different in kind from other words that also define societal relationships, such as love, friendship, respect, or envy. The language of rights is about enforceable entitlements.
Rights are interests constituted by law and enforceable by governments.
He still may expect the citizen to respect the authority of courts, but his sense of the real leads him to be far less reverent to the forms of law as applied to himself. These ideas about law are part of the institutional practice. They are law that constitutes. Legal power in America with its institutional hierarchies is reinforced by the fact of a shared way of proceeding, the most important part of which is agreement on the importance of what is real. Brigham compares and contrasts the CLS and Law and Economics movements.