Abstract:
The debate over the justification for constitutional limits on state courts’ exercise of personal jurisdiction has frustrated civil litigation in the United States for decades. Do limits stem from states’ sovereignty, as the Supreme Court indicated in World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson? Or from individuals’ liberty, as it asserted in Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee? The Court has wavered unsteadily between these justifications, producing a string of rudderless personal jurisdiction decisions and inspiring a seemingly endless sovereignty-versus-liberty debate.
This Article proposes a way out. To do so, it takes aim at the underspecified terms of the debate. The Court has never clearly articulated in this context what it means by “sovereignty” and “federalism” on one hand or “liberty” on the other. In particular, introducing a distinction between internal and external sovereignty, referring to different relationships of authority, reveals an underlying but unspoken logic to existing doctrine. Internal sovereignty must be the current source of limits because parties’ expansive power to authorize jurisdiction over themselves would not make sense otherwise. And this Article argues this is as it should be. Internal sovereignty is the constitutional and conceptual bedrock of personal jurisdiction, which polices the boundaries of the relationship between forum and litigant. Shifting to prioritize external sovereignty instead would unsettle over a century of precedent and constrain individual liberty—all without cause.
Importantly, though, this means sovereignty-versus-liberty has been a false conflict all along. Within personal jurisdiction, internal sovereignty and individual liberty are two perspectives on the same relationship. Whether courts adopt this Article’s richer concept of sovereignty or simply give up sovereignty talk in personal jurisdiction, this conclusion should guide various doctrinal considerations, ranging from the tests for specific and general jurisdiction to the treatment of foreign defendants. It’s long past time to break free of the sovereignty-versus-liberty debate and provide litigants with a more predictable, grounded doctrine of personal jurisdiction.