Ninth Circuit Reverses Personal Jurisdiction Decision in Lufthansa Case
Last year, I expressed doubt over the Northern District of California’s dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction of a suit brought by California residents regarding their alleged mistreatment when checking in for their Lufthansa flight in Saudi Arabia. The Ninth Circuit recently reversed that decision in Doe v. Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft, holding that that the…
Continue ReadingA Helpful Decision on Serving Defendants in China
We have covered extensively on TLB the challenge of serving defendants located in China in accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4 and U.S. treaty obligations under the Hague Service Convention. In a recent decision, the District of Massachusetts (Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV) provided a thoughtful analysis of these issues—citing along the way…
Continue ReadingScholarship Critical of “Schedule A” Cases
A growing chorus of scholarly concern about “Schedule A” cases appears to be catching the attention of some district courts. In a “Schedule A” case, a holder of U.S. intellectual property rights will sue a large collection of defendants, often online merchants based outside of the United States, which it will list in a “Schedule…
Continue ReadingThrowback Thursday: Forecasting Fuld
Nearly a decade ago, Professor Aaron Simowitz identified not only the problem presented in Fuld v. PLO (2025), but also the solution the Supreme Court ultimately adopted. This Throwback Thursday post highlights Simowitz’s article Legislating Transnational Jurisdiction (57 Va. J. Int’l L. 325), which offers important insights for those trying to make sense of Fuld’s…
Continue ReadingWelcome, Hannah Buxbaum!
We are excited to announce that Hannah Buxbaum has joined us as a TLB editor! Hannah is an esteemed scholar who writes on jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, and other topics related to international litigation and comparative law. Regular readers may recall her posts on anti-suit injunctions and on the Venezuelan deportation litigation. Hannah just joined the law…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach Civil Procedure (2025 Update)
As the fall semester gets underway, we are updating our posts on using resources on TLB to teach various classes. This post gathers materials that can complement a standard civil procedure course, whether by providing concise overviews of doctrines, distilling Supreme Court developments, or suggesting recent cases that can spark discussions of perennial procedural issues….
Continue ReadingUnpacking the Originalist Argument for Maximalist Personal Jurisdiction, Part IV: Picquet v. Swan
This is the fourth in a series of posts questioning the originalist argument for unlimited personal jurisdiction in the federal courts. The prior posts have argued that many of the sources cited by proponents of the theory, including early admiralty cases and twentieth-century cases about the extraterritorial reach of Congress’s prescriptive jurisdiction, do not bear…
Continue ReadingUnpacking the Originalist Argument for Maximalist Personal Jurisdiction, Part III: Admiralty Jurisdiction
This is the third in a series of posts questioning the originalist argument for maximalist personal jurisdiction. The crux of the originalist argument is that early federal decisions discussed limits on personal jurisdiction in terms of international law (not constitutional constraints) and that Congress could override international law. Thus, the theory goes, Congress as an…
Continue ReadingUnpacking the Originalist Argument for Maximalist Personal Jurisdiction, Part II: The Logic of Syllogisms
This is the second post in a series questioning the originalist argument for maximalist personal jurisdiction, as embraced by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch in their Fuld v. PLO concurrence. Pivotal to the originalist theory of maximalist personal jurisdiction is the argument that limits on adjudicative power were initially understood not as due process limits (or…
Continue ReadingUnpacking the Originalist Argument for Maximalist Personal Jurisdiction
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fuld v. PLO declined to address what it called the “maximalist” theory of personal jurisdiction put forward by the petitioners, several amici (including the House of Representatives), and some vocal lower court judges: That as a matter of original understanding, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment places…
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