Personal Jurisdiction and Fifth Amendment Due Process Revisited

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chimène Keitner
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
Fifth Amendment ◽  
Personal Jurisdiction

Personal Jurisdiction and Fifth Amendment Due Process Revisited

2020 ◽  
pp. 231-250
Author(s):  
Chimène I. Keitner
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Fifth Amendment ◽  
Civil Proceedings ◽  
Personal Jurisdiction ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
The U.S

This chapter addresses the contested role of U.S. courts in adjudicating disputes with foreign elements. As a matter of domestic law, the Due Process Clauses in the U.S. Constitution constrain the scope of adjudicatory jurisdiction that legislatures can confer on State and federal courts. The Fourth Restatement restates the U.S. law of personal jurisdiction in civil proceedings as requiring that “sufficient contacts” exist between the defendant and the forum, “and that the exercise of jurisdiction be reasonable.” These criteria limit the reach of U.S. courts’ personal jurisdiction. The chapter explores these limits and Congress’s ability to extend them. It also revisits the history and jurisprudence of Fifth Amendment due process limits on personal jurisdiction, considering the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018 (ATCA) and the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019 (PSJVTA).

scholarly journals The Forgotten Property Right

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-528
Author(s):  
Peter Kuylen
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Property Right ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Personal Jurisdiction ◽  
At Home

With its move to the “at home” standard in Goodyear, Daimler, and BNSF, the Supreme Court significantly restricted the exercise of general personal jurisdiction over nonresident corporation defendants. This restriction offers questionable actual benefits to corporate defendants, but its rigid focus on defendant’s rights has impacted the ability of certain plaintiffs to bring a cause of action against those defendants. Because the at home standard infringes on this group of plaintiffs’ ability to assert their property right of redress in violation of the Due Process Clauses of the Constitution (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments), the Court should return to the previous “continuous and systematic contacts” standard developed under International Shoe. Hundreds of articles have been written in the four years since Daimler erased fifty years of general personal jurisdiction jurisprudence. But because personal jurisdiction analysis is traditionally defendant focused, there is little mention of the plaintiff’s property right in access to the courts in that literature. Personal jurisdiction rules should protect a defendant’s interests, but not to the total forfeiture of a plaintiff’s property right. Recognizing the at home standard as a misstep would resolve this constitutional conflict.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Brief of Civil Procedure Professors in Support of Respondents, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company v. California, No. 16-466

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Bradt ◽  
Zachary D. Clopton ◽  
Maggie Gardner ◽  
D. Theodore Rave ◽  
Pamela K. Bookman
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
First Year ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Forum Non Conveniens ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Personal Jurisdiction

Petitioner Bristol-Myers Squibb argues that specific personal jurisdiction “exists only where the defendant’s contacts with the forum caused the plaintiff’s alleged injuries and the resulting suit.” Pet. Br. 17 (emphasis added). This has never been the law. While general jurisdiction may be amenable to narrowly defined categories, specific jurisdiction is not. Ever since this Court’s pathmarking decision in International Shoe Co. v. Washington, specific jurisdiction has been a far more flexible inquiry into the relationship among the forum, the defendant, and the dispute. This is as it should be. Requiring that specific jurisdiction rest on a strict causal link between the defendant’s forum-state contacts and the plaintiff’s claims provides no new benefits. Yet it would create uncertainty, risk destabilizing the system of litigation in both state and federal courts, and cast doubt on several of this Court’s earlier personal jurisdiction decisions.The current law, as established by this Court, is well calibrated both to ensure an appropriate forum for lawsuits and to prevent unfairness to defendants. To affirm the decision of the California Supreme Court in this case, the Court need only hold that Petitioner has purposefully availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities in California (which no one disputes), Respondents’ claims relate to Petitioner’s California contacts (which is barely, if at all, disputed), and California’s assertion of jurisdiction is reasonable (which Petitioner has effectively conceded (Pet. App. 35a)). No more need be said.The purpose of this brief is to explain why Petitioner’s proposed causation rule is a historical, inconsistent with the principles of personal jurisdiction, potentially destabilizing, and unnecessary to protect defendants from abusive exercises of state power. In short, this Court should decline to adopt petitioner’s proposal and should leave the law on specific jurisdiction unchanged for three reasons.First, this Court has never relied on a causation requirement to endorse — or reject — a state’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over a defendant. In fact, for this Court to do so would be inconsistent with a number of cases in which this Court found — or all involved assumed — that there was personal jurisdiction over claims against the defendant that were not caused by its forum-state contacts.Second, changing course now by adopting a causation requirement would lead to disruptive, inefficient, and unfair results — in both simple and complex litigation, and in both state and federal courts. A new causation test would throw into doubt even chestnuts of the first-year jurisdictional curriculum, like World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson. And it could wreak havoc with the way courts resolve our most complicated and economically important disputes, like the extensive litigation arising out of the ongoing Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” scandal.Third, it is unnecessary to take that risk in order to protect defendants from litigating in an unfair forum. Indeed, in this case, Petitioner has not even argued that California is an unfair place to litigate. To the extent that Petitioner’s concern is being haled into an inconvenient or distant forum, those concerns are already addressed in this Court’s requirement that any exercise of personal jurisdiction be reasonable. And in cases where another court is manifestly more appropriate, defendants may move to transfer the case or dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds. To the extent that Petitioner’s concerns relate to the law a court applies, such concerns are covered by each state’s choice-of-law rules and the constitutional restrictions on those rules. To the extent that Petitioner’s concerns relate to a state’s hostility towards out-of-state corporations, such concerns are addressed by diversity jurisdiction. Remedies for any such bias are therefore best left to Congress in defining the right to remove and the subject-matter jurisdiction of the federal courts. Finally, to the extent that Petitioner’s concerns are that the cases are being litigated against it at all — as Petitioner candidly admitted before the Court of Appeal — those concerns are not covered by the Due Process Clause.

Human Dignity and the Psychology of Interrogation in Miranda v. Arizona.

1986 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 109-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Manfredi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Fifth Amendment ◽  
Police Interrogation ◽  
Procedural Safeguards

Miranda v. Arizona, holding confessions obtained during police interrogation inadmissable unless preceded by a full and specific disclosure of a suspect's rights, is perhaps the best known U.S. Supreme Court decision on due process. The decision was built on the twin pillars of human dignity and free will. The Court determined that the intent of the Fifth Amendment is to protect human dignity, and argued that dignity is jeopardized by state actions whose effect is to diminish free will. Consequently, the Court extended the restrictions on police investigators it had been developing since Bram v. United States. In that decision, the Court ruled that confessions could not “be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence.” In Miranda, the Court attached the widest possible meaning to “improper influence,” ruling that interrogation is, in itself, an influence against which suspects must be protected by procedural safeguards. It is instructive to reflect on these issues at a time when similar questions are being raised in Canadian courts under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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