Drop the Shoe: A Law of Personal Jurisdiction

Personal jurisdiction standards outlined in International Shoe Co. v. Washington have proven to be inadequate. This Article begins in Part II with an examination of the origins of the International Shoe minimum contacts test, and then in Part III analyzes and critiques the opinion and the test. Part IV looks at later Supreme Court cases that attempt to refine and apply the test, and Part V looks at the same pattern for other federal courts and state courts. These Parts lead to the conclusion that the minimum contacts test should be abandoned in favor of a new law for personal jurisdiction, and so to Part VI, which proposes that the Court should “drop the Shoe.” After an examination in Part VII of whether state boundaries should be considered in the formulation of a new law personal jurisdiction, the article proposes new law in Part VIII. In order to determine the practicality of the proposed new law, the Article applies it to the facts presented in previous Supreme Court personal jurisdiction cases, and to some of today’s commonly recurring factual situation, in Part IX