The Public-Private Distinction in the Conflict of Laws

1 The purpose of the distinction was "to stake out distinctively private spheres free from the encroaching power of the state" 2 and to create "a neutral and apolitical system of legal doctrine and legal reasoning free from what was thought to be the dangerous and unstable redistributive tendencies of democratic politics." 3 In the early twentieth century, the public-private distinction came under at- tack, particularly from legal realists who argued that because private- law rights were enforced by the state they should be conceptualized as delegations of public power to private individuals.