Q2

[JaneZ630]

Can someone help to explain why the right answer is not A?

I always have troubles with law-related articles...

[ohthatpatrick]

First, we'd have to ask ourselves how "state action" was being used in the second paragraph.

Let's re-read the beginning of the 2nd paragraph for context:

Line 17-19 - 14th amendment applies to state actors but not individuals.

What do we mean by "state actors"? NOT-individuals.
I guess it would be like if a government AGENCY did something.

In line 19, "where was the state action that invokes the 14th amendment in the case of private contracts?"

So that's saying, when one private INDIVIDUAL makes a contract with another private INDIVIDUAL, where is there a state actor / state action?

i.e. What government agency did anything in this situation?

So I guess I would define "state action" here as
when some government agency does something

If we translate the question stem, we're trying to figure out which question helps us determine whether something can be classified as a state action.

So if we put our paraphrase in the form of a question, it would sound like
"Does this question help me decide whether some government agency did something?"

(A) The range of people affected is a CLUE about who did something, but it's not directly informative. Obviously we would associate individual actions with a smaller range of affected people than state actions would affect, but that's a tendency not an absolute.

A state action like the DMV suspending an individual's driver license would primarily affect only that individual, and maybe anyone whom he/she normally has in his/her car.

An individual action like dropping poison in the local water supply would affect tons of people.

So this question would help us guess about whether it's an individual vs. a government agency that did something, but it wouldn't directly tell us.

(B) This is literally just saying "Who did the action?", so yes that would directly tell us whether an action was an individual's action or a state action.

"To what agent can performance of the action be ascribed" = "Who did the action"

Welcome to the world of legalese. You were mentioning that you don't do well at law passages, but you're only going to see more of this crap in law school and in the legal profession, so embrace the journey of getting used to it / getting better at it.

(C) The principles governing an action, like (A), would offer clues but wouldn't directly tell us whether an action was performed by an individual or by the state.

(D) This is very similar to (A).

(E) This is very similar to (C).

Hope this helps.

[DorisW471]

Hi, I have an approach to reach this question, hopefully, you can find it helpful.

Rationale: When I meet a question asking me to determine a phrase's or a word's meaning in the passage, I would look for the context before and after it to understand its meaning in that specific situation.

Application: In this case, the question basically asked us to determine the meaning of "state action", so I looked at the context before and after that phrase and I found the following clues:

1. in paragraph 1, the author defined the covenants as " private legal obligations...requiring that only members of a certain race be allowed to occupy...";

2. in paragraph 2, after that phrase, the author said that "the enforcement of the covenants violate...should be attributed to the state..." (line 24)

3. in paragraph 3, the author expressed his attitude towards that case's underlying legal rationale, saying that "Shelley's attribution logic threatened to dissolve the distinction between state action...and private action"(line 35).

From all those clues, I inferred that the author's usage of "state action" is meant to be contrasted with "private action", and "private action" can be referred to as something that private "members" of a certain race can do (perform). Also, I can infer that the author thought that the court dissolved the distinction between those 2 concepts and thus used a wrong legal rationale.

Then, look back to the question:

(A) range of people got affected. This concept is not mentioned or implicitly contained in the passage, does the state action affect any people? We don't know, perhaps Shelley's case does affect the following cases regarding racially restrictive covenants, but that's not relevant to state action mentioned here.

(B) yes, the agent of performance to be ascribed. As clue No.2 expressly mentioned "ascribe" and clue No.3 echoed with "attribution", I think we can safely infer that the author used this phrase to refer to "the agent that can be ascribed to the performance of the action".

In the real test, I didn't make such analysis and just picked (B) because I know the author's purpose was to question that "dissolving distinction" made by the court's legal rationale, so I thought the author wanted to use this phrase as sth that should be done by the state rather than individuals, also, I saw "ascribed", a keyword that has been used by the author several times around "state action".

Hope this can help.

[LeonC641]

Hi, I am confused about what' the task that the question stem asks. I am not sure whether it asks about the author's opinion or about the meaning of state action based on the fourth sentence alone.

If the question stem were to only have the first part, then it would be very clear to me! My trouble is that I couldn't see what's the purpose of mention the second part of the stem. Instead of "as it is mentioned in the passage", why does the stem specifically point out "the fourth sentence of"?

Thank you very much!
Leon