Page:Mallory v. Norfolk Southern.pdf/7

4 similar due process argument from a corporate defendant. Id., at 560, n. 13 (citing Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. v. McCall, 312 Ga. 422, 863 S. E. 2d 81 (2021)).

In light of this split of authority, we agreed to hear this case and decide whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a State from requiring an out-of-state corporation to consent to personal jurisdiction to do business there. 596 U. S. ___ (2022).

The question before us is not a new one. In truth, it is a very old question—and one this Court resolved in Pennsylvania Fire Ins. Co. of Philadelphia v. Gold Issue Mining & Milling Co., 243 U. S. 93 (1917). There, the Court unanimously held that laws like Pennsylvania’s comport with the Due Process Clause. Some background helps explain why the Court reached the result it did.

Both at the time of the founding and the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption, the Anglo-American legal tradition recognized that a tribunal’s competence was generally constrained only by the “territorial limits” of the sovereign that created it. J. Story, Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws §539, pp. 450–451 (1834) (Story); see also United States v. Union Pacific R. Co., 98 U. S. 569, 602–603 (1879). That principle applied to all kinds of actions, but cashed out differently based on the object of the court’s attention. So, for example, an action in rem that claimed an interest in immovable property was usually treated as a “local” action that could be brought only in the jurisdiction where the property was located. 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on