Since the decision in The Civil Rights Cases (1883), the U.S. Constitution has been understood to address itself only to “state action.”  This seminar will examine the state action doctrine in depth.  The doctrine has two constituent elements: first, the claim that the Constitution constrains only governmental or public entities but not private parties, and second, that the commands of the Constitution reach only the government's action and not its inaction. However, the lines between the public and private domains, and between an agent's action and its inaction are highly contested in theory and manipulable in practice, making operationalization of the doctrine problematic.  At the same time, the existence of the state action doctrine implicates fundamental normative questions about the proper scope of governmental  responsibility for social ills and about the nature of constitutionalism in market societies. This Seminar will address these questions through readings of historical, contemporary and comparative materials in law and legal theory.  Topics will include state passivity, judicial action and government neutrality, state subsidization of private conduct, privatization of traditional government functions, and the exceptional case of the Thirteenth Amendment.