Talk:State action

The DeShaney case appears to be misinterpreted as holding that the DCS was not a state actor, while it actually holds that DCS was not constitutionally responsible for Randy DeShaney's, a private actor's, abuse of Joshua DeShaney. This should perhaps be corrected to more accurately reflect the ruling.

While Shelley v. Kramer's holding is properly stated in this article, its application as precedent has been quite limited, which should be reflected in the article in order to properly characterize what generally constitutes state action. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wamccart (talk • contribs) 17:39, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 31 October 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus appears to be in favor of the proposed move in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME. With some long discussion on actor vs. action, the result appears to be in favor of action. (closed by non-admin page mover) EggRoll97 ^(talk) 15:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

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State actor → State action – This concept in U.S. constitutional law is most commonly known as "state action" or the "state action doctrine" (as can be seen in the article's references). Moreover, "state actor" is also used outside the context of U.S. law as the opposite of a non-state actor, which is a phrase commonly used in international relations and national security. So this is the WP:COMMONNAME and more WP:PRECISE. SilverLocust 💬 20:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Lightoil (talk) 14:51, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

• I have no particular objection to the proposed move, so long as the article text is adjusted accordingly. BD2412 T 21:02, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I'll do the necessary cleanup if moved. I was in any event thinking about substantially revising the article, which you commendably created. SilverLocust 💬 21:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. "State actor" is commonly seen; "state action" is not. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

  I am curious to know how you came to this conclusion about what is commonly seen (in U.S. law). Your userpage indicates you are English and don't have a law degree, so I wouldn't think it's from personal experience. Is it possible you are conflating the U.S. concept with the different, international concept of a non-state actor? SilverLocust 💬 22:59, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Concur with User:Necrothesp. "State actor" is the more common term among lawyers and in published case law. I just checked my old law school notes. Exactly as I had remembered, "state actor" was the term used by Adam Winkler when I took constitutional law. I just checked Google Books and it is true that "state actor" seems to be slightly less common than "state action" in their database. This is probably because, as I have pointed out elsewhere in Wikipedia:Google Books and Wikipedia, publishers of works on arcane subjects like law prefer to keep their work out of the Google Books database so that it cannot be searched or indexed. Thus, Google Books is not representative of the actual corpus of published work in those fields. For example, most California lawyers learn the basic principles of discovery and motion practice from the Rutter Group's California Practice Guide to Civil Procedure Before Trial, but that treatise is impossible to access or search on Google Books. The only way to access that book is to buy the hard copy version (currently $924.00 for a full set) and subscribe to hard copy updates, or visit a law library, or get a Westlaw subscription that includes Rutter Group content (not all of them do). --Coolcaesar (talk) 14:54, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Coolcaesar: I can search case law, though I cannot search minds to discover "the more common term among lawyers". What I do see does not show state actor being more common.

  — I searched case law on scholar.google.com: state action state actor (SCOTUS cases), which has more hits for the former, though there are admittedly some false positives. There are similar results on other search settings (all courts, federal courts, all time). (If someone would like to search Westlaw ($$$) or Lexis ($$), be my guest.) Both phrases are in common use, but the former seems to be used more when referring to the doctrine/concept and the latter when referring to the entity doing the action. For illustration: "To draw the line between governmental and private, this Court applies what is known as the state-action doctrine. Under that doctrine, as relevant here, a private entity may be considered a state actor when it exercises. . . ." Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1926 (2019).

  — Since you anecdotally mention Prof. Winkler's class, I checked his book We the Corporations, which uses only "state action" and not "state actor": "Someone can only claim to have his or her individual rights violated when the government has burdened those rights. This is known as the "state action" requirement." Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights 267 (2018). (The index also uses "state action" requirement Id. at 466. I do not see any instance of "state actor".) (And, as expected, his other famous book, Gunfight, doesn't seem to say anything about it.)

  — Since you mention California and case law, I checked the most famous state-action case from California, Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), which uses "state action" seven times and "state actor" not once. Likewise, the decision in the California Supreme Court, Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, 23 Cal. 3d 899 (1979), uses "state action" twice and "state actor" not once.

  — Then I grabbed the first conlaw casebooks I could find, and checked each one's index:

  1. Russell L. Weaver, et al., Constitutional Law: Cases, Materials, and Problems 1970 (5th ed. 2011) (state action).
  2. Norman Redlich, et al., Constitutional Law I-19 (5th ed. 2008) (state action doctrine).
  3. This one is actually a hornbook rather than a casebook. 3 William J. Rich, Modern Constitutional Law Index-112 (3d ed. 2011) (state action doctrine).
  4. Randy E. Barnett & Howard E. Katz, Constitutional Law: Cases in Context 1641 (2d ed. 2013) (state action).
  5. Ronald D. Rotunda, Modern Constitutional Law: Cases and Notes 1504 (10th ed. 2012) (state action).
  6. Daniel A. Farber, et al., Cases and Materials on Constitutional Law: Themes for the Constitution's Third Century Index-55 (4th ed. 2009) (state action).

  — And since I apparently did not mention it the nomination, the references in the article use "state action" in their titles (or use neither term). And other scholarly law articles show the same preference. Searching HeinOnline's Law Journal Library (available to experienced Wikipedia users with WP:LIBRARY) shows 749 articles with "state action" in their title and 49 with "state actor(s)" (or 29 when excluding non-state actor, which, as I noted in the nomination, is different concept not specific to the United States).

  Shall I go on? SilverLocust 💬 22:34, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

• Very well, I stand corrected. I was able to locate several con law casebooks whose contents are searchable on Google Books and verified that "state action" always gets far more hits than "state actor" in each book. So I will change my vote on this to neutral for the time being. This appears to be one of those issues where theory diverges from praxis: in my experience, everyone says and writes "state actor" because they're usually arguing that a specific actor is or is not a state actor. It's like how the California Penal Code consistently uses the term "preliminary examination" in the statutory text, but anyone who says that out loud in court will get a double take since the commonly used term is "preliminary hearing".
• Anyway, you are correct that the case law and the published academic literature seems to refer to "state action" or "state action doctrine" more often. Since we go with what published reliable sources say, I will not oppose the proposed move at this time. Of course, that I have noticed this issue, I will be on the lookout for sources which specifically highlight and explain this divergence. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:03, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Assumign these terms are synonymous, the WP:COMMONNAME appears to be state action - [1]  — Amakuru (talk) 17:01, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.