Death to Immunity from Service of Process Doctrine!

Abstract:     
The immunity from service of process doctrine provides that a nonresident cannot be served while going to, attending, and leaving an ongoing judicial proceeding. However, the doctrine evolved while "tag" jurisdiction was in vogue, whereby mere presence in the forum state sufficed, and the nonresident only had to be "tagged" with service to confer jurisdiction on the forum state. This article suggests that modern "minimum contacts" territorial jurisdiction theory more adequately addresses the concerns of efficiency of judicial proceedings and fairness to nonresidents than the immunity from service of process doctrine. The article proposes that the immunity from service of process is unnecessary and should be discarded, and that the considerations underlying the doctrine should instead be folded into the territorial jurisdiction-as-fairness analysis.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 21

Keywords: immunity from service of process, territorial jurisdiction, minimum contacts, fairness, personal jurisdiction, pennoyer v. neff, international shoe

JEL Classification: K10, K19, K40, K41, K49, N40

working papers series