Morgan asserts that during the 1960s and 1970s a "rights industry," consisting of interest group advocates, activist lawyers, law professors, and publicists, had become engaged in expanding, redefining, and manipulating the law of civil rights and liberties in order to create new rights against the claims of society, even when these ignored or distorted America's constitutional tradition. As a result, American institutions, both governmental and private, have been seriously disabled. He argues that the time has come to reassert the claims of society against exalted and unreasonable questions of individual rights.