GEE, Circuit Judge:
Today we decide whether a private litigant in a federal civil case who challenges a venire member peremptorily can be made to give reasons for his action. Specifically, [219]*219we must determine whether he can be required to do so when his opposing party is a black person and the venireman stricken is black, so as to rebut the inference that he exercised the strike because of the would-be juror’s ethnic group.
The Supreme Court has imposed such a requirement in criminal prosecutions of black defendants, Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986); and in partial reliance on that decision a panel of our court has extended the principle to this civil damage suit by reversing the trial court, which had held that such a rule does not obtain in civil litigation. Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., Inc., 860 F.2d 1308 (5th Cir.1988). We now reconsider that decision en banc and affirm the trial court.
We do so for two reasons: the mechanical one, that state action is not present in such a case as this; and the logical one, that striking a venireman in a civil case because you fear he may tend to favor your opponent over you neither demeans him nor calls in question the fairness of the civil justice system.
Facts
The panel opinion states the relevant facts succinctly:
Injured in an accident on a construction job at Fort Polk, Louisiana, a federal enclave, Thaddeus Donald Edmonson, a 34-year-old black male, sued Leesville Concrete Company for negligence in federal district court. The case was tried to a jury.
Edmonson used all three of his peremptory challenges to excuse members of the venire who were white. Leesville challenged peremptorily two prospective jurors who were black and one who was white. Citing Batson, Edmonson asked the district court to require Leesville to articulate a neutral explanation for the manner in which it had exercised its challenges. The district court denied the request on the ground that the Batson ruling did not apply to civil proceedings, and then proceeded to impanel a jury composed of eleven white jurors and one black juror. The jury rendered a verdict for Edmonson, assessing his total damages at $90,000, but, because it found him 80% contributorily negligent, awarded him only $18,000. Edmonson seeks a new trial because of Leesville’s alleged racial discrimination in its exercise of peremptory challenges.
Id. at 1309-10 (footnote deleted).
The Peremptory Challenge: 1066 A.D. through Swain
The history of the peremptory challenge in felony cases stretches back many hundreds of years to the roots of the common law. That history, both in England and in our Country, is reviewed with painstaking thoroughness by Justice White in his opinion for the Supreme Court in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965). To his account we neither can nor need add anything; we merely repeat his relevant conclusions here for the reader’s convenience:
(1) “The use of peremptory challenges is of ancient origin and is given in aid of the party’s interest in having a fair and impartial jury.” Wright & Miller, Federal Practice & Procedures: Civil § 2483, at 473 (citing to Swain, 380 U.S. 202, 217, 85 S.Ct. 824, 834, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965).
(2) “The essential nature of the peremptory challenge is that it is one exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control.... It is often exercised upon the ‘sudden impressions and unaccountable prejudices we are apt to conceive upon the bare looks and gestures of another....’ It is no less frequently exercised on grounds normally thought irrelevant to legal proceedings or official action, namely, the race, religion, nationality, occupation or affiliations of people summoned for jury duty.” 380 U.S., at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 835.
(3) “The presumption [that the prosecutor is using the State’s challenges to obtain a fair and impartial jury] is not overcome and the prosecutor there[220]*220fore subjected to examination by allegations that in the case at hand, all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes. Any other result, we think, would establish a rule wholly at odds with the peremptory challenge system as we know it.’’ 380 U.S., at 222, 85 S.Ct. at 836 (emphasis added).
(4) Where, however, it is shown that per-emptories are being used to serve the purpose of generally disqualifying blacks as jurors on a racial basis, relief can be had.
A vigorous dissent, written by Justice Goldberg and joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Douglas, would have extended the holding of Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880), to cover the situation presented by Swain, taking the view that a sufficient showing had been made that the strikes in question were exercised, not with reference to the outcome in the particular case, but for the purpose of denying to black citizens the same right to participate in the administration of justice as whites enjoyed.2 380 U.S., at 229, 85 S.Ct. at 840 et seq.; see also United States v. Leslie, 783 F.2d 541, 545-46 (5th Cir.1986) (en banc), vacated and remanded, 479 U.S. 1074, 107 S.Ct. 1267, 94 L.Ed.2d 128 (1987).
And so matters rested for twenty years. During these, the Equal Protection Clause was thought to bar any general or systematic disqualification of black citizens as veniremen on any notion of supposed incapacity or inferiority, but — as Swain explicitly noted — to permit them to be cut from a jury panel by peremptory challenge for any reason or for no reason, just as any other person might be struck. In essence, the peremptory could be exercised on any ground whatever, including race, that was directed and limited to seeking a given result in a particular case. Only when the challenge could be shown to have been employed as a device to eliminate blacks from jury service generally was it vulnerable to constitutional attack under Swain.
Batson
A little over three years ago, in Batson v. Kentucky, supra, the Court acted for the first time seriously to trammel the use of the peremptory challenge to strike black veniremen in the criminal prosecution of a black.3 James Batson, a black male, was indicted for burglary and receiving stolen goods. Because the prosecutor struck all four black persons on the venire, Batson was tried by an all-white jury and convicted. His Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment objections unavailing, he sought and got relief from the Supreme Court. The form which it took, however, was a reaffirmation of the root principle of Swain — that systematic exclusion of black jurors from trying black defendants in criminal cases infringes the rights of both — but a revision to lighten the evidentiary burden announced in Swain.
Justice Powell’s opinion in Batson therefore observes that “[a] number of lower courts following the teaching of Swain reasoned that proof of repeated striking of blacks over a number of cases was necessary to establish a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”4 476 U.S., at 92, 106 S.Ct., at 172. (footnote deleted). Disapproving this very high standard of proof, which by hindsight it correctly characterized as “a crippling burden” 5, the Court laid out a less demanding, two-step process of proof: first, a prima facie showing by the defendant of discrimination against veniremen of his race; second, a coming for[221]*221ward by the state with a neutral explanation for each of its peremptory challenges to veniremen of that race. The Court is at pains, moreover, to make plain that an assumption of partiality on the mere basis of shared race will not do as such an explanation.6 476 U.S., at 97, 106 S.Ct., at 1723. Thus the law of strikes in criminal cases. Should it be extended to civil ones?
State Action?
This issue is accurately stated by our panel as: “[W]hether the exercise of peremptory challenges by a private litigant in a civil action pending in federal court is a government action, to which the Fifth Amendment applies, or a private action, which the Constitution does not reach.” 860 F.2d, at 1310. The answer to it is dispositive of the appeal; for if governmental action is not present, then the courts hold no warrant to interfere, in the name of equal protection, with the system of civil peremptory challenges.7
Our inquiry is assisted by the two-step test laid down by the Supreme Court in Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 939, 102 S.Ct. 2744, 2754, 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982), for assaying the presence or absence of state action. The first requirement is clearly present here: that the claimed deprivation has resulted from the exercise of a right or privilege having its source in governmental authority. The second, however, seems equally clearly to be wanting: the presence of some figure who can fairly be characterized as a state actor.
In Batson, no such doubt arose: there the entire proceeding was commenced and carried through by the prosecuting attorney, the very embodiment of the state’s power, acting in the direct interest of its most fundamental function, maintaining law and order. In today’s case, no such figure is present; and only two conceivable candidates present themselves: the trial judge and the private defendant’s trial attorney.
The notion of trial judge as “state actor” need not detain us long. In the first place, as the Supreme Court observed in Swain — factually and not in such a manner as to be subject to overruling by Bat-son — the peremptory challenge “is one exercised ... without being subject to the court’s control_” 380 U.S., at 220, 85 S.Ct., at 835. The merely ministerial function exercised by the judge in simply permitting the venire members cut by counsel to depart is an action so minimal in nature that one of less significance can scarcely be imagined.8 No exercise of judicial discre[222]*222tion is involved, rather a mere standing aside; so that the fault — if it is a fault— lies with the system which permits such challenges, not with the judge’s mere ministerial compliance with what the rule requires.9 Finally, it is hard to see how the Supreme Court could have reserved judgment, as it purported to do in Batson, on the strikes by defense counsel, if the “actor” was the judge. 476 U.S., at 89 n. 12, 106 S.Ct., at 1719 n. 12. If the judge is the actor, then, and if his mere excusing of veniremen who have been peremptorily challenged from further attendance at court be deemed an “act,” it follows that every aspect of every civil trial, state and federal, is constitutionalized — a quantum procedural leap that we leave for the Supreme Court to make, should it wish to do so.
As for private counsel, it is inconceivable to us that a privately-retained lawyer, serving a private client in a damage suit such as this, should be viewed as a state actor.10 Clearly he cannot be, at any rate, so long as the 1981 Supreme Court holding stands that even a public defender, paid by the state, in a criminal proceeding against an indigent defendant is not. Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 102 S.Ct. 445, 70 L.Ed.2d 509 (1981). Nor, common sense tells us, does private counsel partake of such a character. True, he is licensed by the State; not, however, for its benefit but in the hope of insuring a minimum degree of competence to his clients. Like the public defender, it is their interests, their partisan interests, which he serves; and where their proper and lawful interests and those of the State come into conflict, he hews to those of his client in every instance — and properly so. Nor is the interest of the state by any measure so deeply involved in civil litigation between private parties in its own courts as in criminal litigation there: in the former case it simply furnishes a level playing field for dispute resolution in the name of civic peace, in the latter it is the instigator and actor, with powerful interests of its own at stake. Nor can it be said that private counsel in a civil damage suit performs a “public function.” 11
And so, since it appears to us that no state actor is present on the scene of today’s case, we conclude that Constitutional considerations are not implicated. So much for the mechanical application of precedent; we turn in closing to a few underlying considerations of logic and policy.
Strikes in Practice
A function of strikes is to allow the parties to participate to some degree in the selection of the jury that is to try their case, to the end that each may not only have, but perceive that he has had, a fair and impartial trial. It is certainly main-[223]*223tamable that this function is of greater significance in federal court proceedings than in most, for there the attorney’s role in jury selection is perhaps at its nadir among American jurisdictions. Ordinarily, for example, counsel does not there address the venire; and his other functions are correspondingly reduced in this aspect of trial.
It is proverbial that strikes are exercised on diverse bases: to remove the venireman whom counsel thinks the court should have excused for cause or, occasionally, in the case where counsel is allowed to interrogate the venire, the venireman whom he perceives that he has seriously offended by his questions. But even more tenuously, strikes are exercised to excuse anyone who simply did not sit right with counsel (“I didn’t like the way she looked at my client”), or whom he feels might for any reason have a predisposition toward the other side, or an aversion to his own. The literature on this subject, it being one familiar only to trial lawyers — a group not noted for its special devotion to scholarly writing — is sparse, but see Sutin, The Exercise of Challenges, 44 F.R.D. 286 (1967); Babcock, Voir Dire: Preserving “Its Wonderful Power,” 27 Stan.L.Rev. 545 (1975). At any rate, every lawyer with substantial trial experience knows that he has often exercised strikes for which he could articulate no clear reason even to himself, but which he desperately wished to exercise. And at all events, a procedural device of such great age and broad acceptance as the civil peremptory challenge should require little defense: clearly, for a long time, and in jurisdiction after jurisdiction, it has been found to serve useful purposes. We should therefore avoid tampering with its essential feature, the absence of a requirement to give reasons for its use, unless either the reasoning or the authority of Batson requires that we do so. Because, despite their superficial similarity, the true contexts of the criminal prosecution and the civil trial are greatly different, we conclude that neither does.
To begin with, and as we note briefly above, the government is directly involved in the criminal prosecution, appearing in the person of one of its central figures, the prosecutor — without whose will it cannot be brought and upon whose performance as its central actor all depends. His role has no counterpart in civil litigation, for in this respect his will is the will of the State. But, more fundamentally, the entire purpose of a criminal prosecution is to enforce the purposes of the state, whereas the state has no purpose at all in civil litigation beyond preempting the use of private force to settle disputes — a purpose that is as well served, if the parties consent, by an arbitration to which the state is no party. Finally, in a criminal prosecution the jury serves in some real sense as, not only a safeguard against, but an instrument of, the state’s power. Once invoked, its collective will is sovereign as to guilt or innocence and, sometimes, even as to life or death. For these reasons, we do not believe that a court proceeding so cautiously as did the Batson court, one which was careful to point out that its holding did not extend even to the exercising of perempto-ries by defense counsel in a criminal case, would have intended by that decision’s authority to dictate our result today. 476 U.S., at 89 n. 12, 106 S.Ct., at 1719 n. 12.
Nor do we think that the Court’s reasoning does so. As we have observed above, Justice Powell’s opinion in Batson expressly states that its scope is limited to a reexamination of “that portion of Swain ... concerning the evidentiary burden placed on a criminal defendant who claims that he has been denied equal protection through the State’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude members of his race” from the jury. 476 U.S., at 82, 106 S.Ct., at 1714 (citation omitted).12 In all other respects, Batson simply reaffirms Swain’s holding that “a State’s purposeful or deliberate denial to Negroes on account of race of participation as jurors in the administration of justice violates the Equal Protection [224]*224Clause.” 476 U.S., at 84, 106 S.Ct., at 1716, quoting Swain, 380 U.S., at 203-04, 85 S.Ct., at 826-27. This is, however, a far cry from the proposition advanced by Mr. Ed-monson in today’s case, which can fairly be stated as
Whenever a private litigant sued for damages by a black plaintiff strikes a black venireman, he can be required to give a reason other than their common ethnicity for having done so.
For several reasons, we do not believe that the considerations underlying Swain or the reasoning upon which it rests support such a proposition as this.
To begin with, the informing principle of the Strauder-Swain-Batson line of decisions is that black citizens cannot, as a matter of Constitutional law, be barred from full participation in the administration of criminal justice as jurors. Strauder, of course, involved an example of the most overt of such attempts to do so: an exclusion of blacks by statute from the entire venire summons process. As Judge Garwood, writing for our en banc court, has noted, such an exclusion is racially demeaning. United States v. Leslie, 783 F.2d 541, 554 (5th Cir.1986) (en bane), vacated and remanded, 479 U.S. 1074, 107 S.Ct. 1267, 94 L.Ed.2d 128 (1987). Swain and Batson were concerned with use by the state of peremptory challenges to accomplish the same purpose in a more roundabout way: to remove black veniremen from the case simply because they were black, the decisions differing from each other solely on the manner of proof, but agreeing in principle. And that principle, to reiterate it, is that neither directly nor indirectly can black citizens be denied the opportunity for criminal jury service on racial grounds alone. The reason underlying the principle is that the Constitution does not permit unequal treatment of citizens on the ground of race and will not entertain — because it is insulting — even the suggestion that one is unfit to discharge a civic duty for such a reason.
This is a far cry, however, from striking a black venireman for particular reasons in a particular case, even for reasons having to do with his race. To take a few examples, for obvious reasons counsel representing a defendant airline in a damage suit might well peremptorily challenge a black airline pilot who was himself on strike for higher wages against another airline. Such a challenge, based on an assumed situational animosity toward his client, clearly raises no equal protection problems, even though the venireman stricken is black. To take a closer case, however, one may well imagine that counsel defending a well-known member of the Ku Klux Klan in an action for, say, breach of contract by a white plaintiff might strike any black veniremen whom he had been unable to convince the judge to excuse for cause, not because of any notion of ethnic inferiority, but rather on the prudential ground of probable hostility, ineradicable despite the subject’s best efforts. Such an action does not demean the stricken subject; it merely recognizes a probable fact of life. And finally, (arguably) today’s case: counsel, representing a party opposing a black plaintiff, who strikes all blacks on the ve-nire because he fears that they may be inclined — even if only ever so slightly — to favor one of their own. It seems to us very plain indeed that none of these strikes has been taken on a ground which is demeaning to its object.
As for the third example given, however, in Batson the Supreme Court clearly stated that such a reason must not be accepted for a strike in a criminal case:
But the prosecutor may not rebut the defendant’s prima facie case of discrimination by stating merely that he challenged jurors of the defendant’s race on the assumption — or his intuitive judgment — that they would be partial to the defendant because of their shared race. Cf. Norris v. Alabama, 294 US, [587] at 598-599, 79 LEd 1074, 55 SCt 579 [583-584]; see Thompson v. United States, 469 US 1024, 1026, 83 LEd2d 369, 105 SCt 443 [445] (1984) (Brennan, Jr., dissenting from denial of certiorari). Just as the Equal Protection Clause forbids the States to exclude black persons from the venire on the assumption that blacks as a group are unqualified to serve as [225]*225jurors, supra, [476 U.S.] at 86 [106 S.Ct. at 1717], 90 LEd2d, at 80, so it forbids the States to strike black veniremen on the assumption that they will be biased in a particular case simply because the defendant is black. The core guarantee of equal protection, ensuring citizens that their State will not discriminate on account of race, would be meaningless were we to approve the exclusion of jurors on the basis of such assumptions, which arise solely from the juror’s race.
476 U.S., at 97-98, 106 S.Ct., at 1723-24.
Thus, by Supreme Court mandate, in the criminal prosecution of a black defendant, it is as much a violation of equal protection for the prosecutor to strike a black venireman because he thinks he might be more inclined than another to favor such a defendant as it is to strike him because he views him as inherently unfit for service as a juror because of his race. More to the purpose, we think, than attempting to equate the two actions described is a recognition that to countenance such an explanation for such a strike would be to return to pre-Strauder days and permit the prosecutor in such a case, having thought up a new set of arguments for doing so, to strike a black venireman merely because he is black. The Court’s result is, therefore, explicable on practical grounds in the context of criminal prosecutions. We think it would be much less so, however, in civil actions for damages between private parties — such as this one.
In a civil suit, unlike a criminal prosecution, the state itself takes no action on its own behalf that could be viewed as exhibiting official prejudice. It is, we think, a sound policy that requires the state to conform to stricter standards and appearances in dealing with its citizens than are demanded of those citizens in their dealings with each other. As an illustration, we need look no further than Justice Sutherland’s often-quoted language in Berger v. United States:
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor— indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
295 U.S. 78, at 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, at 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935).
But more fundamentally, vastly different things are at stake in criminal trials and as regards the criminal jury than where civil trials and civil juries are concerned. The criminal jury is a central feature of the criminal justice system, where liberty and even life are at stake. It holds not only fact-finding powers but, because of the Double Jeopardy Clause, the de facto power to pardon. As to the criminal jury, then, we can see how the Court might strike the balance which it did in Batson between the actuality or even the appearance of racially motivated strikes and the “any reason or no reason” rule for peremptory challenges that has come down to us from the common law.
The civil jury, on the other hand, serves a fact-finding function only, and the issues before it are, generally speaking, limited to economic ones. To be sure, it is part of the civil justice system just as its criminal counterpart is part of the criminal one; but its function is far less pivotal and central even to civil litigation than that of a jury in a criminal case is to criminal justice. Private counsel, in striking such a jury, has in mind a simple imperative, far removed from that which should motivate the prosecutor.
For the prosecutor’s aim is justice. He wins when justice is done and — although it is surely not the outcome he envisions— when it becomes apparent during the trial [226]*226of a criminal case, a la the celebrated fictional career of Perry Mason, that the accused is innocent of the crime with which he stands charged, the prosecutor has not “lost.”
It is otherwise with the civil advocate. His client is in a quarrel, and he is in a fight. The fight may be a more or less genteel one, conducted in an ethical fashion to be sure; but it remains a fight nonetheless: one which, unless settled, will be won by one side of the contest and lost by the other. It is the first imperative of the civil advocate to see that it is his side that wins.
As with all other aspects of his case, counsel brings that proper concern to striking the jury; and, because of it, in doing so he follows one precept and one only: by all fair means, to get a jury which, given his foreknowledge of the case, he believes will in the end be more naturally disposed to favor his side of the dispute than that of his opponent. Within the limits of fair and ethical conduct, his sole concern is, quite properly, that his client gain the case. In such a context as this, we see no occasion to inquire into counsel’s motives for his strikes or, at any rate, none that outweighs the value of leaving the common-law peremptory challenge system in undiminished effect. If counsel is astute, he will recognize the obvious truth that there are ordinarily more affinities between a black C.P.A. and a white C.P.A. than there are between a white C.P.A. and a white longshoreman. But even if he is obtuse, it remains that he is only a private person acting obtusely: one for whose actions the state is neither actually nor apparently accountable. That it stands aside, neither approving nor disapproving his actions, and permits him to exercise his three strikes for any reason, for no reason, or even for a bad reason does not implicate the state in his conduct.13
Finally, when the civic concerns which underlie the Strauder line of cases are removed or greatly lessened, as they are when we shift from service on the criminal jury to service on the civil one, it remains true that the traditional peremptory strike is a leveller of the playing field. It is exercisable against any venireman, high or low, black or white, rich or poor, and without specifying a reason. Thus the peremptory, as traditionally constituted, is a device tending more to equal treatment of all the venire than the strike as reconfigured in Batson, which requires counsel to possess (or invent) an articulable reason other than race for challenging a black venireman when a black defendant is being prosecuted, but none for challenging a white one. Thus while he can strike a white venireman for an honest but inarticulable reason — or for a silly one: some always strike barbers; others, housepainters — he must give a reason if he strikes a black one.14 It is not for us to quarrel with the Supreme Court’s Batson reconfiguration of the peremptory, but we decline to extend its strictures on this ancient right into the civil area, where the considerations on which Batson is based are, if present at all, far weaker than in the criminal field.
The judgment of the district court is therefore
AFFIRMED.