J. McIntyre Machinery, Goodyear, and the Incoherence of the Minimum Contacts Test

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|On June 27, 2011, when J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastrol and Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown were handed down, it marked for the first time in almost a quarter of a century that the United States Supreme Court engaged in an extended discussion of the minimum contacts test. That test-first announced by the Court in International Shoe Co. v. Washington-has for nearly seven decades set the basic parameters of measuring the constitutionality of exercises of state-court personal jurisdiction. Before its two latest decisions, the Court's last significant discussion of minimum contacts came in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court of California. Law professors who teach Civil Procedure and related subjects waited eagerly for the new cases, having had for over two decades no fresh Supreme Court opinions to teach in what is a staple of nearly every first-year law student's educational experience...