Page:Mallory v. Norfolk Southern.pdf/9

6 As the use of the corporate form proliferated in the 19th century, the question arose how to adapt the traditional rule about transitory actions for individuals to artificial persons created by law. Unsurprisingly, corporations did not relish the prospect of being haled into court for any claim anywhere they conducted business. “No one, after all, has ever liked greeting the process server.” Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 592 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (, concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7). Corporations chartered in one State sought the right to send their sales agents and products freely into other States. At the same time, when confronted with lawsuits in those other States, some firms sought to hide behind their foreign character and deny their presence to defeat the court’s jurisdiction. Ibid.; see Brief for Petitioner 13–15; see also R. Jackson, What Price “Due Process”?, 5 N. Y. L. Rev. 435, 438 (1927) (describing this as the asserted right to “both be and not be”).

Lawmakers across the country soon responded to these stratagems. Relevant here, both before and after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, they adopted statutes requiring out-of-state corporations to consent to in-state suits in exchange for the rights to exploit the local market and to receive the full range of benefits enjoyed by in-state corporations. These statutes varied. In some States, out-of-state corporate defendants were required to agree to answer suits brought by in-state plaintiffs. See, e.g., N. Y. Code Proc. §427 (1849); 1866 Wis. Laws ch. 1, §86.1; Md. Ann. Code, Art. 26, §211 (1868); N. C. Gen. Stat., ch. 17, §82 (1873). In other States, corporations were required to consent to suit if the plaintiff’s cause of action arose within the State, even if the plaintiff happened to reside elsewhere. See, e.g., Iowa Code, ch. 101, §1705 (1851); 1874 Tex. Gen. Laws p. 107; 1881 Mich. Pub. Acts p. 348. Still other States (and the federal government) omitted both of these limitations. They required all out-of-state corporations that registered to do