The Law Of Personal Jurisdiction

On the whole, the personal jurisdiction jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2011 has been substantively bad and ideologically ill-motivated and unreasonably dismissive of precedent (something also true of its landmark decisions on pleading standards in civil actions).

The Supreme Court did not decide a personal jurisdiction case between 1990 and 2011. It launched its new era of personal jurisdiction in 2011 with a specific jurisdiction case, J. McIntyre, and a general jurisdiction case, Goodyear. The former did nothing new, but the latter began a significant restriction of general jurisdiction. That restriction would have a profound impact on specific jurisdiction in many cases, by forcing a change of focus – from whether the defendant had forged a purposeful contact with the forum to whether the plaintiff’s claim is sufficiently related to that contact.

This new focus in specific jurisdiction requires consideration of the claim itself (usually the domain of subject matter jurisdiction) and of the plaintiff's contacts with the forum (ordinarily not relevant to the personal jurisdiction inquiry). Twice in the new era – with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in 2017 and in the Ford Motor Company (Ford) in 2021 -- the Court has addressed the connection required between the defendant's contact with the forum and harm suffered by the plaintiff. It took different approaches to whether the claim "arises out of or relates to" the contact in the two cases. Ford is far more nuanced than BMS and opens the door to a more plaintiff-friendly approach, particularly in product-liability cases against large firms, than we have seen in the new era. Ford may signal that the Court now feels it went too far in restricting general jurisdiction in the new era. Most interestingly, perhaps, separate opinions in Ford indicate several Justices' willingness to rethink the personal jurisdiction canon -- particularly Pennoyer and International Shoe.

Richard D. Freer, "From Contacts to Relatedness: Invigorating the Promise of "Fair Play and Substantial Justice" in Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine"73 Alabama L. Rev. 583 (2022).