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Ashley V. Abbott Laboratories: Reconfiguring The Personal Jurisdiction Analysis In Mass Tort Litigation, Julia C. Bunting

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Supreme Court has struggled for over one hundred years to articulate a workable standard for determining whether a court may exercise personal jurisdiction, over a defendant without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite a substantial body of precedent, the Court has been unable to enunciate a consistent, intelligible test to govern personal jurisdiction. The Court's pronouncements swing between two bases: the territoriality, sovereignty, and power concerns established by Pennoyer v. Neff, and the defendant-centered fairness analysis announced in International Shoe Co. v. Washington. As a result of this inconsistency, lower courts adhere to vastly different …