The Supreme Court, in a recent case, Daimler AG v. Bauman,1 undertook to separate, analytically and practically, the standards for specific and general jurisdiction. In doing so, the court gave prominence to a separate standard for general jurisdiction—the “at home” test—that could well change the way the courts allow suits against foreign corporations, even those with active subsidiaries in the United States.
When most lawyers think of the requirements for personal jurisdiction over defendants under the U.S. Constitution, they refer to the International Shoe case.2 That case dealt primarily with what is known as “specific jurisdiction”—that which is based on activities within the jurisdiction that relate to the basis for the lawsuit—and “sufficient contacts or ties” under the facts of the case to permit, in the words of the decision, “the state of the forum to make it reasonable and just, according to our traditional conception of fair play and substantial justice, to permit the state to enforce the obligation which appellant has incurred there.”3
