International Shoe Case: Minimum Contacts and Fair Play Test

The International Shoe case and its minimum contacts test set the rule that a state court can exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant when that defendant has enough of a deliberate connection to the state that being sued there does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”¹ Decided by the Supreme Court in 1945, International Shoe Co. v. Washington replaced an older rule that required physical presence inside a state before its courts could bind a defendant, and it remains the framework nearly every personal jurisdiction dispute in American courts still runs through.²

What the Case Decided

International Shoe Co. was a Delaware corporation headquartered in St. Louis. Between 1937 and 1940, it employed eleven to thirteen salesmen who lived in Washington and worked under sales managers back in Missouri, soliciting orders that were sent to St. Louis for approval. Washington operations generated roughly $30,000 per year.¹ The company had no offices, warehouses, or stores in the state. When Washington tried to collect unpaid unemployment compensation contributions, International Shoe argued that its lack of physical presence meant the state had no power over it.³

The Supreme Court disagreed. The company’s continuous sales activity through resident employees created sufficient ties to Washington to satisfy the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.¹ Because the company enjoyed the benefits of Washington’s market, it was reasonable for Washington to hold it answerable for obligations arising out of those operations. The real weight of the decision was not who won but the test the Court built to replace the old physical-presence rule.

What “Minimum Contacts” Actually Means

The first half of the International Shoe test asks whether the defendant has established “minimum contacts” with the state where the suit was filed.² The analysis is qualitative, not just a headcount. A single deliberate act aimed at a state can sometimes be enough, while a large volume of passive or incidental contact might not be. Courts look at whether the defendant’s activities were continuous and systematic or isolated and sporadic, whether they connect to the claim being brought, and whether the defendant gained an economic benefit from the state’s market.

Purposeful Availment

Thirteen years after International Shoe, the Court sharpened the analysis in Hanson v. Denckla by adding the requirement of “purposeful availment.” The defendant must have deliberately reached into the state and taken advantage of the opportunity to conduct business there. A plaintiff’s own decision to bring a product or relationship into a state is not enough; the defendant must have done something affirmative to connect itself to the forum.⁴

This protects defendants from being pulled into court based on someone else’s choices. If a consumer buys a product in one state and drives it to another where it causes an injury, the manufacturer’s jurisdiction in that second state depends on whether the manufacturer itself targeted that market. World-Wide Volkswagen reinforced the point in 1980: the mere foreseeability of a product reaching a state is not enough. What matters is whether the defendant’s own conduct and connections are such that it should reasonably expect to be sued there.²

Fair Play and Substantial Justice

Contacts alone do not decide the question. Even when a defendant has meaningful connections to a state, the court must separately ask whether exercising jurisdiction would be reasonable. International Shoe framed this as whether jurisdiction comports with “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”¹ It acts as a safety valve, capable of defeating jurisdiction even when contacts technically exist.

The Supreme Court laid out five factors for evaluating reasonableness in Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz in 1985:

The burden on the defendant of litigating in the forum.
The forum state’s interest in resolving the dispute.
The plaintiff’s interest in convenient and effective relief.
The interstate judicial system’s interest in efficient resolution.
The shared interest of the states in advancing substantive social policies.

No single factor is dispositive.⁵ Defendants rarely win on reasonableness alone; once minimum contacts are established, they face a heavy burden to show that jurisdiction would be so unreasonable as to violate due process. The fairness analysis makes the most difference in cases involving foreign defendants with limited U.S. presence sued in distant forums over modest claims.

General and Specific Jurisdiction

Over time, International Shoe’s framework produced two categories of personal jurisdiction. The Court did not use these labels in 1945, but the distinction now controls almost every case.

General Jurisdiction

General jurisdiction lets a state hear any claim against a defendant, even one unrelated to activity in that state. The trade-off is a high threshold: the defendant’s connections must be so continuous and systematic that the defendant is essentially “at home” there. For corporations, the two paradigm places are the state of incorporation and the state of the principal place of business. In Daimler AG v. Bauman in 2014, the Court held that even substantial sales in a state are not enough to make a foreign corporation at home there. Otherwise, virtually every large company could be sued anywhere it distributes products, which the “at home” test does not contemplate.⁶

Specific Jurisdiction

Specific jurisdiction requires a tighter fit between the defendant’s contacts with the state and the plaintiff’s claim. The suit must arise out of or relate to what the defendant did in the forum. A company that sells a defective product in Texas can be sued there for injuries the product caused, but not necessarily for an unrelated dispute at its Ohio headquarters.

The Court refined the “arise out of or relate to” requirement in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court in 2021. Ford argued that specific jurisdiction required a strict causal link, meaning the particular car that caused the injury had to have been sold in the forum state. The Court rejected that reading. Ford’s extensive marketing, dealership network, and service operations in Montana and Minnesota created a sufficient relationship even though the specific vehicles involved had been purchased elsewhere.⁷

Specific jurisdiction still has limits. In Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California in 2017, hundreds of plaintiffs from across the country joined a single California suit against the drug manufacturer. The Court held that California courts could hear claims from California residents who were prescribed the drug there but had no authority over claims by nonresidents whose injuries had no connection to the state. The company’s unrelated California business did not fill the gap.⁸

In practice, general jurisdiction is rare and broad, specific jurisdiction is common and narrow. Most disputes involve specific jurisdiction because the plaintiff sues where the harm occurred or where the defendant engaged in the challenged conduct.

Where the Test Gets Harder

Stream of Commerce

Purposeful availment becomes genuinely difficult in the “stream of commerce” scenario: a manufacturer sells a component to a distributor, who puts it into a finished product, which eventually reaches a consumer in a distant state. The Supreme Court fractured on this in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court in 1987 and never fully resolved it. One camp said placing a product into the stream while aware it could reach a particular state is not enough; the defendant needs additional conduct directed at the forum, such as advertising, distribution channels, or design choices for that market.⁹ Another camp said awareness alone can suffice. Courts still split on which view to follow.

Intentional Conduct Aimed at a State

Calder v. Jones in 1984 held that intentional conduct aimed at a particular state can create jurisdiction there even if the defendant never entered the state. A Florida-based reporter and editor who wrote an allegedly defamatory article about a California entertainer could be sued in California because their conduct was expressly aimed at causing harm there.¹⁰ The Court later limited this “effects test” in Walden v. Fiore in 2014, emphasizing that the analysis has to focus on the defendant’s contacts with the forum itself, not on the defendant’s knowledge that the plaintiff lives there. The plaintiff cannot be the only link.¹¹

Consent Through Corporate Registration

In 2023, the Court took a notable turn in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. Pennsylvania’s corporate registration statute explicitly provides that registering to do business in the state subjects a corporation to general personal jurisdiction on any claim. Norfolk Southern had registered and operated in Pennsylvania for more than two decades. The Court held that by complying, it had consented to general jurisdiction there even for claims with no connection to the state.¹² Mallory opens a potential path around Daimler’s strict “at home” limitation in states with registration statutes as explicit as Pennsylvania’s.

Internet and E-Commerce

Online business created new pressure on the framework. A company can reach customers in every state through a website without any employees, warehouses, or representatives outside its home state. Courts have applied International Shoe’s core principles to online activity, asking whether the defendant purposefully directed its conduct toward the forum rather than simply maintaining a site accessible from anywhere. A widely used lower-court framework distinguishes three levels of online activity: a business that repeatedly contracts with residents of another state and processes orders there is generally subject to jurisdiction; a purely informational site that neither solicits nor transacts business with forum residents generally is not; and interactive sites in between require a case-by-case look at how deliberately the operator targeted the forum’s market. The core question stays the same.

How Long-Arm Statutes Fit In

International Shoe sets the constitutional ceiling, but it does not itself hand any state court the power to reach a nonresident. States must pass their own laws, called long-arm statutes, authorizing their courts to exercise that jurisdiction. A court can never go past what the Constitution permits, and it also cannot exercise jurisdiction that its state’s statute does not authorize.¹³

States take two basic approaches. Some extend jurisdiction to the full constitutional limit, so the only question is due process. Others list specific categories of conduct that support jurisdiction, such as committing a tort inside the state, owning property there, or contracting to supply goods or services in the state. In those states, a court runs a two-step analysis: does the defendant’s conduct fall within a listed category, and does exercising jurisdiction satisfy International Shoe? Both must be answered yes.

Raising a Personal Jurisdiction Challenge

A defendant who thinks the court lacks personal jurisdiction has to raise it at the first opportunity or lose the argument. In federal court, the defense can be raised by pre-answer motion or by including it in the answer itself, which is typically due within 21 days of service.¹⁴

The waiver rule is strict. A defendant who files an initial motion raising other defenses but omits personal jurisdiction has waived the argument permanently, and the same is true for a defendant who files an answer without mentioning it.¹⁴ State courts follow similar rules, though deadlines and procedures vary. The payoff for getting it right is real: because personal jurisdiction is a constitutional protection rather than a procedural rule, a judgment entered by a court that lacked it is void and unenforceable in any state.¹³

1
Justia. International Shoe Co. v. Washington
2
Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.7.1.3 Modern Doctrine on Personal Jurisdiction
3
Legal Information Institute. International Shoe Co. v. State of Washington, Office of Unemployment Compensation and Placement
4
Justia. Hanson v. Denckla
5
Justia. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz
6
Justia. Daimler AG v. Bauman
7
Justia. Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court
8
Justia. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California
9
Justia. Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court
10
Justia. Calder v. Jones
11
Justia. Walden v. Fiore
12
Supreme Court of the United States. Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co.
13
Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.7.1.1 Overview of Personal Jurisdiction and Due Process
14
Cornell Law School. Rule 12 – Defenses and Objections: When and How Presented; Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings; Consolidating Motions; Waiving Defenses; Pretrial Hearing