Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

9-20-2012

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; Litigation, Procedure & Dispute Resolution eJournals; Law & Society eJournals; International Law & Trade eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Public International Law eJournals; Humanities Network; Political Science Network

Abstract

When certiorari was granted in J McIntyre Machinery Ltd v Nicastro 131 S Ct 2780 2011 many hoped that the Supreme Court would provide muchneeded clarification to the area of personal jurisdiction It didn't The Court failed to generate a majority opinion splitting into Justice Kennedy's fourJustice plurality Justice Breyer's twoJustice concurrence and Justice Ginsburg's threeJustice dissentThis essay "“ for the Southwestern Journal of International Law's 2012 symposium "Our Courts and the World Transnational Litigation and Procedure" "“ examines how state and federal courts have been using the McIntyre decision Some lower court opinions have mistakenly interpreted McIntyre as establishing new constitutional restraints on state court exercises of personal jurisdiction or as resolving previously open questions in favor of a more restrictive approach These opinions misread the Justices' opinions in McIntyre In particular there has been confusion about Justice Breyer's concurrence which explicitly disagreed with Justice Kennedy's reasoning and was premised on a narrow understanding of the factual record in McIntyre Many lower court decisions however correctly recognize that the fractured McIntyre decision does not mandate new constitutional restrictions on personal jurisdiction

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