March 5, 2021 | 9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
The Alabama Law Review hosted a one-day symposium, Ten Years of the Supreme Court’s Personal Jurisdiction Revival, on March 5, 2021 virtually via Zoom.
Personal jurisdiction—a court’s power to make binding judgments regarding the parties or property involved in a lawsuit—is a threshold issue in every civil action. It is also a matter of constitutional due process in which the Supreme Court, at various points in its history, has been deeply involved. However, for more than twenty years during the 1990s and 2000s, the Court remained silent—even as the nature of civil litigation, commerce, and society itself changed dramatically. That silence ended in 2011, with Goodyear and McIntyre, commencing a significant period of renewed interest by the Court. Ten years later, judges, lawyers, and legal scholars alike are continuing to analyze and debate the ramifications of these decisions.
This year’s symposium, entitled Ten Years of the Supreme Court’s Personal Jurisdiction Revival, explored the Court’s recent decisions and the questions they raise going forward. The symposium featured renowned scholars, including a keynote address by Arthur Miller of New York University School of Law, and experienced practitioners, including Sean Marotta and Deepak Gupta, who argued the Ford cases—the Supreme Court’s latest foray into personal jurisdiction—this Term.
