Thursday audio--Section A. Essays ## 7 and 8 will post next Wednesday, April 8, due Wednesday, April 15.
Prep all cases in Modern Analysis (Nicastro, Walden, BK), then prep General Jurisdiction Revisited. Prep the puzzles and questions ahead of time.
On the subject of Long Arm Statutes: This short article includes an appendix identifying the long-arm provision for each state, including where it appears (Constitution, statute, court rules) and whether it is an enumeration, a catch-all, or a hybrid. Nice resource to have.
In returning to Daimler, the casebook omits two footnotes that are worth highlighting, for understanding the Shoe Algorithm and how the analysis works. Both are on p.173:
• FN 19 is at the end of ¶ 2, on the word State.
We do not foreclose the possibility that in an exceptional case, see, e.g., Perkins, described supra, at 10–12, and n. 8, a corporation’s operations in a forum other than its formal place of incorporation or principal place of business may be so substantial and of such a nature as to render the corporation at home in that State. But this case presents no occasion to explore that question, because Daimler’s activities in California plainly do not approach that level. It is one thing to hold a corporation answerable for operations in the forum State, see infra, at 23, quite another to expose it to suit on claims having no connection whatever to the forum State.
• FN 20 is at the end of Part IV.B, on the word California.
To clarify in light of Justice Sotomayor’s opinion concurring in the judgment, the general jurisdiction inquiry does not “focu[s] solely on the magnitude of the defendant’s in-state contacts.” Post, at 8. General jurisdiction instead calls for an appraisal of a corporation’s activities in their entirety, nationwide and worldwide. A corporation that operates in many places can scarcely be deemed at home in all of them. Otherwise, “at home” would be synonymous with “doing business” tests framed before specific jurisdiction evolved in the United States. See von Mehren & Trautman 1142–1144. Nothing in International Shoe and its progeny suggests that “a particular quantum of local activity” should give a State authority over a “far larger quantum of . . . activity” having no connection to any in-state activity. Feder, supra, at 694.Justice Sotomayor would reach the same result, but for a different reason. Rather than concluding that Daimler is not at home in Cali- fornia, Justice Sotomayor would hold that the exercise of general jurisdiction over Daimler would be unreasonable “in the unique circumstances of this case.” Post, at 1. In other words, she favors a resolution fit for this day and case only. True, a multipronged reasonableness check was articulated in Asahi, 480 U. S., at 113–114, but not as a free-floating test. Instead, the check was to be essayed when specific jurisdiction is at issue. See also Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U. S. 462, 476–478 (1985). First, a court is to determine whether the connection between the forum and the episode-in-suit could justify the exercise of specific jurisdiction. Then, in a second step, the court is to consider several additional factors to assess the reasonableness of entertaining the case. When a corporation is genuinely at home in the forum State, however, any second-step inquiry would be superfluous.Justice Sotomayor fears that our holding will “lead to greater unpredictability by radically expanding the scope of jurisdictional dis- covery.” Post, at 14. But it is hard to see why much in the way of discovery would be needed to determine where a corporation is at home. Justice Sotomayor’s proposal to import Asahi’s “reasonableness” check into the general jurisdiction determination, on the other hand, would indeed compound the jurisdictional inquiry. The reasonableness factors identified in Asahi include “the burden on the defendant,” “the interests of the forum State,” “the plaintiff’s interest in obtaining relief,” “the interstate judicial system’s interest in obtaining the most efficient resolution of controversies,” “the shared interest of the several States in furthering fundamental substantive social policies,” and, in the international context, “the procedural and substantive policies of other nations whose interests are affected by the assertion of jurisdiction.” 480 U. S., at 113–115 (some internal quotation marks omitted). Imposing such a checklist in cases of general jurisdiction would hardly promote the efficient disposition of an issue that should be resolved expeditiously at the outset of litigation.
