An important foundational issue in the law is the question of jurisdiction.
Jurisdiction is about a court's power to hear a case.
Questions and doctrines related to jurisdiction
are especially developed in the United States,
where there are a host of rules in this respect.
This will therefore be the focus of this lesson.
There are three basic aspects to jurisdiction,
or three basic types of jurisdiction.
The first is whether a court has jurisdiction
over the subject matter of a case.
That is called subject matter jurisdiction.
The question here is whether a court is the right court for the type of dispute.
For instance, the U.S. Patent Court has jurisdiction over patent disputes,
but it has obviously no jurisdiction over divorce proceedings.
Or a criminal law court can hear criminal law cases,
but it doesn't have jurisdiction over civil matters like tort
or contractual disputes.
The second type of jurisdiction is personal jurisdiction.
In order to be allowed to hear a case,
a court needs to have
both subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction.
Personal jurisdiction asks whether a court has jurisdiction
over a specific person or organization
as the defendant in a case.
Normally, a court in the state where a defendant resides
has jurisdiction over that person,
but courts in other states don't.
For example,
a court in the state of California does not necessarily have jurisdiction
over a person who resides in New York.
Generally, the doctrine of personal jurisdiction
is grounded on two main principles:
Courts should protect defendants from the burden of facing litigation
in an unlimited number of possibly remote jurisdictions,
and courts should prevent states from infringing
on the sovereignty of other states
by limiting the circumstances
under which defendants can be hauled into court.
One exception to these guiding principles is the concept of implied consent.
There are various instances where someone's consent to jurisdiction
in a place other than a person's residence can be implied.
Among others, examples of implied consent include:
Driving on the roads of another state.
This may count as implied consent
to be subject to that state's jurisdiction.
Committing a tort in another state
can also result in applied jurisdiction in that state.
Furthermore, a non-resident can be served with a summons
while personally present in a state
and is then subject to jurisdiction in that state.
But it is also possible to explicitly consent to jurisdiction.
For instance, someone who resides in New York
could agree to be sued in California.
If so, then there is explicit consent
to submit to the jurisdiction of the courts in California.
Businesses can also be subject to jurisdictions outside the state
where they are headquartered if they conduct business in other states.
This falls under the minimum contact test,
which has been codified in several states' so-called long-arm statutes.
Doing business in a state can consist
of maintaining an office,
manufacturing goods,
soliciting business,
providing services, et cetera.
The leading case on business and minimum contacts
is International Shoe Company v. State of Washington,
a Supreme Court decision from 1945.
The plaintiff in that case, the state of Washington,
established a tax on business employers
which consisted of a mandatory contribution
to a fund for unemployed workers in the state of Washington.
The defendant, International Shoe Company,
was incorporated in Delaware,
with its principal place of business in Missouri.
The company did not have an office in Washington State.
The corporation had maintained for some time a staff of several salesmen
in the state of Washington,
working on commission.
The salesmen were residents of that state,
and they met with prospective customers in motels and hotels
and occasionally rented space to put up displays.
International Shoe Company did not pay the tax at issue in this case,
so the state tried to enforce collection.
But International Shoe Company disputed the state's jurisdiction
over it as a corporate person.
The lower courts held that Washington had personal jurisdiction over the company,
and International Shoe appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The issue involved a determination
of the level of connection that must exist
between a non-resident corporation and a state
in order for that corporation to be sued within that state.
The Supreme Court held that the activities by its salesmen
on behalf of the corporation
established sufficient contacts
between the state and the corporation
to make it reasonable and just
for the state to enforce against the corporation
an obligation arising out of such activities.
The key reasons were that there had been continuous
and systematic business operations in the state.
Case law on minimum contacts is still evolving,
more recently, in particular in the context of e-commerce.
For instance, some courts have held
that a passive web page is insufficient to establish personal jurisdiction,
but an interactive website through which a defendant conducts business
can be enough to establish personal jurisdiction in the locations
from where the website's users access the site.
The third and final type of jurisdiction is in rem jurisdiction.
Rem refers to the Latin term for thing or property.
In rem jurisdiction asks whether a court has the power
to decide cases concerning a specific property.
For example, a court in New York may not have the power
to decide cases involving a house
that is located in California.
Conversely, the California court will likely have in rem jurisdiction
over that property, based on its location.
Let's try and apply these principles to an example.
Let's say that a tenant rents an apartment in New York
from a landlord who resides in Connecticut.
The tenant has a slip and fall in his apartment
due to a puddle of water in the lobby and breaks his leg.
Where can the tenant sue the landlord?
There are actually a few options here.
The tenant may sue in Connecticut because the landlord resides there.
That's personal jurisdiction.
The tenant may also sue in New York
because the landlord is doing business there
by renting out the apartment.
That's long-arm jurisdiction under the minimum contacts test
established in the International Shoe case.
The tenant could also sue in New York because the apartment is located there,
and the dispute arises out of this property.
That's in rem jurisdiction.
Finally, the tenant may also sue in New York
because the landlord may have committed a tort there,
which establishes implied consent.