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Full-Text Articles in Law
How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, Stephen E. Sachs
How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, Stephen E. Sachs
Faculty Scholarship
Personal jurisdiction is a mess, and only Congress can fix it. The field is a morass, filled with buzzwords of nebulous origin and application. Courts have sought a single doctrine that simultaneously guarantees convenience for plaintiffs, fairness for defendants, and legitimate authority for the tribunal. Caught between these goals, we've let each new fact pattern pull precedent in a different direction, robbing litigants of certainty and blunting the force of our substantive law.
Solving the problem starts with reframing it. Rather than ask where a case may be heard, we should ask who may hear it. If the parties are …
Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
This essay, in a symposium honoring the scholarship of Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, explores the “diversity explanation” of the Eleventh Amendment that he had advanced in articles while he was a UC-Berkeley law professor. That explanation, contrary to existing Supreme Court doctrine that heavily constitutionalizes state sovereign immunity from suits by private parties and foreign countries, would view the Eleventh Amendment as having solely to do with federal courts’ constitutional jurisdiction and nothing to do with states’ sovereign immunity. The essay notes the cleanness of interpretation provided by the diversity explanation, in contrast with the convoluted nature of …
Introduction, Paul Finkelman