Law Commons^™

Why The Supreme Court Should Give The Easy Answer To An Easy Question: A Response To Professors Childress, Neuborne, Sherry And Silberman, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

This paper responds to arguments that the Supreme Court should sidestep the core questions of personal jurisdiction in DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman. It argues that general personal jurisdiction over a corporation should be limited to the corporation's home state. As a corollary of this point, an agency relationship between a parent and subsidiary does not justify attribution of contacts for purposes of general jurisdiction. The key to the analysis is understanding the fundamental difference between specific jurisdiction and general jurisdiction, and this distinction explains several of the disagreements between myself and other participants in this Roundtable.