The Territorial Reach of Federal Courts

Federal courts exercise the sovereign authority of the United State when they assert personal jurisdiction over a defendant. As components of the national sovereign, federal courts' maximum territorial reach is determined by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which permits jurisdiction over persons with sufficient minimum contacts with the federal courts limited to the territorial reach of the state in which they sit when they exercise personal jurisdiction in most cases? There is no constitutional or statutory mandate that so constrains the federal judicial reach. Rather, it is by operation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure—specifically Rule 4(k)—that federal courts are not ordinarily permitted to exercise jurisdiction to the full extent that Fifth Amendment due process would support.

This Article will lay out the various arguments in favor of revising the Federal Rules to enable federal courts to exercise personal jurisdiction to the full extent permissible under the Constitution. In doing so, this Article will address the issues that would arise out of such a revision and provide comprehensive treatment of the matters that would need to be addressed in order to move federal courts in this direction.