International Shoe Explained

International Shoe was a Delaware corporation headquartered in St. Louis. It had no office in Washington, made no contracts there, and kept no inventory there. What it did have was eleven to thirteen commissioned salesmen who lived in Washington, displayed sample shoes to buyers, and sent orders back to Missouri for acceptance and shipment. Washington assessed the company for contributions to the state unemployment compensation fund and served notice on a salesman in Washington plus a copy by registered mail to the St. Louis office. The company appeared specially and argued the state could not reach it.

The Court, per Chief Justice Stone, upheld jurisdiction. The salesmen's activities were "systematic and continuous" and produced a large volume of interstate business, and the suit arose out of exactly those activities. Two things about the holding matter for your exam. First, the Court did not hold that continuous and systematic contacts are required — it held they were sufficient on these facts where the claim was connected to them. Second, the Court expressly rejected the older "presence" and "implied consent" fictions that lower courts had used to explain corporate jurisdiction, calling them conclusory labels for a judgment that should be made openly.

Cite it as Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) in a citation sentence, and spell out "International Shoe Co. v. Washington" when the case name appears as part of a textual sentence.

Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1877), tied jurisdiction to physical sovereignty: a state had complete power over persons and property within its borders and none outside them. That worked when defendants were people who could be tagged with process. It broke down for corporations, which exist as legal fictions and can do enormous business in a state without ever being anywhere.

Courts patched the problem with fictions — a corporation was "present" in the state, or had "impliedly consented" to jurisdiction by doing business there. International Shoe discarded the patch and rebuilt the foundation. Due process now asks about the quality and nature of the defendant's connection to the forum, not about where a sheriff can physically find the defendant. Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457 (1940), supplied the borrowed phrase "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice."

Pennoyer's territorial logic survives in two pockets. Shaffer v. Heitner, 433 U.S. 186 (1977), subjected quasi in rem jurisdiction to the minimum contacts standard, largely killing attachment jurisdiction based on unrelated property. And Burnham v. Superior Court, 495 U.S. 604 (1990), upheld tag jurisdiction over an individual served while physically in the forum, though the Justices split badly on why.

International Shoe stated a standard, not a rule, and later cases filled in the content. As applied today, the analysis runs in two steps, and you should write both.

Step one is contacts. The defendant must have purposefully availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities in the forum, invoking the benefits and protections of its laws — that language comes from Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235 (1958). The contacts must be the defendant's own, not contacts created by the plaintiff or by third parties who happened to move to the forum; Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014), is the cleanest statement of that point. And the defendant must be able to reasonably anticipate being haled into court there, per World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286 (1980), which held that a car's unilateral transport into Oklahoma was not a contact of the New York dealer.

Step two is fairness. World-Wide Volkswagen and Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462 (1985), list five reasonableness factors: the burden on the defendant, the forum state's interest, the plaintiff's interest in convenient and effective relief, the interstate judicial system's interest in efficient resolution, and the shared interest of the states in substantive social policies. Burger King put the burden on the defendant to make a compelling case that jurisdiction is unreasonable once minimum contacts exist. Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987), is the rare case where reasonableness alone defeated jurisdiction — a Japanese valve maker sued by a Taiwanese tube maker for indemnity in California.

International Shoe itself sketched a rough taxonomy: contacts that are continuous and systematic and give rise to the claim; single or occasional acts connected to the claim; contacts so substantial that the defendant can be sued on unrelated claims; and casual contacts that support nothing. Later courts turned that sketch into the specific/general divide, and Justice Ginsburg made the split explicit in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011).

Specific jurisdiction requires that the claim "arise out of or relate to" the defendant's forum contacts. Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 141 S. Ct. 1017 (2021), held that phrase is disjunctive: strict but-for causation is not required, so Ford could be sued in Montana over a crash involving a used Explorer it had never sold there, because Ford extensively marketed and serviced that model in the state. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), sets the outer limit — nonresident plaintiffs could not piggyback on a defendant's forum sales to other people.

General (all-purpose) jurisdiction now requires that the defendant be "essentially at home" in the forum. Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117 (2014), and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, 581 U.S. 402 (2017), confine that for corporations to the place of incorporation and the principal place of business, absent an exceptional case like Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Co., 342 U.S. 437 (1952). Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408 (1984), shows that even substantial purchases and training trips are not enough. Note also that Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023), allowed jurisdiction based on consent through a state business-registration statute — a route that bypasses International Shoe entirely.

Do not lead with International Shoe. Lead with the statutory authorization, then the constitutional test. In state court, ask whether the long-arm statute reaches the defendant; some states, like California, extend to the constitutional limit, while others enumerate specific acts. In federal court, Rule 4(k)(1)(A) borrows the long-arm of the state where the district court sits, unless Rule 4(k)(2) or a federal statute supplies nationwide service.

Then run the constitutional analysis in this order: (1) Is there general jurisdiction — is the defendant at home under Daimler? (2) If not, specific jurisdiction: purposeful availment, then relatedness under Ford, then reasonableness under Burger King. (3) Check consent, waiver under Rule 12(h)(1), and in-state tag service.

Reserve International Shoe for the framing sentence and for the two-part standard itself. Your points come from applying the later cases to the facts, not from reciting 1945 language.

The biggest error is treating "continuous and systematic" as the general jurisdiction test. It was, for decades, but Goodyear and Daimler replaced it with "essentially at home." A corporation can have continuous and systematic contacts with forty states and be at home in only two.

The second error is collapsing contacts and fairness. They are separate inquiries. If a defendant lacks purposeful availment, you never reach the five factors; convenience cannot manufacture contacts, and Bristol-Myers made clear that the forum state's interest cannot substitute for a connection between the claim and the defendant's conduct there.

A third error is forgetting which due process clause applies. The Fourteenth Amendment constrains state courts; the Fifth Amendment governs when a federal statute authorizes nationwide service, and there the relevant sovereign is the United States. Finally, remember that International Shoe also decided a notice question — service on the salesman plus mailed notice satisfied due process — which is a separate requirement later developed in the Mullane line, not part of minimum contacts.