1481 Minimum Contacts in a Borderless World: Voice over Internet Protocol and the Coming Implosion of Personal Jurisdiction Theory Danielle Keats Citron∗ Modern personal jurisdiction theory rests on the twin pillars of state sovereignty and due process. A nonresident’s “minimum contacts” with a forum state are treated as the equivalent of her territorial presence in the state and hence justify a state’s exercise of sovereignty over her. At the same time, the nonresident’s “purposeful availment” of opportunities within the state is seen as implying her agreement to that state’s jurisdiction in exchange for the protection of its laws. This theory presumes that a nonresident directs voice communications to known places by dialing a telephone number’s area code. Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) and the borderless communications of the twenty-first century belie this assumption. Area codes will no longer reliably correspond to known locations; individuals can call, and do mischief in, a state without ever realizing that they are contacting that state. With VoIP and its emerging applications, most means of interstate communications — voice, fax, file-sharing, e-mail, and real-time video conferencing — will lack geographic markers. The U.S. Supreme Court will be forced to choose which value is paramount: state sovereignty or the implied contract approach to due process. In a few cases arising from cellular phone calls, lower courts have privileged the implied contract theory. This effectively returns the law of personal jurisdiction to the nineteenth century formalism of Pennoyer v. Neff by limiting jurisdiction to ∗ Assistant Professor Designate, University of Maryland School of Law. I appreciate the comments of Richard Boldt, Maxwell Chibundu, Bob Condlin, Lisa Fairfax, Jim Fleming, Bob Kaczorowski, Mike O’Dell, Joel Reidenberg, Bill Reynolds, Max Stearns, Allan Stein, David Super, Peter Quint, Michael Van Alstine, and Harry Weller. This Article benefited from the excellent research of Michael Lamson and Todd Phelan. I am grateful to Dean Karen Rothenberg and the University of Maryland School of Law for supporting this research.1482 University of California, Davis [Vol. 39:1481 defendants’ home states in cases arising from harmful communications. This evisceration of state sovereignty is unwarranted. Other means can protect a nonresident defendant from abusive process. Securing state sovereignty over harmful borderless communications promotes a healthy federalism, reconciling seemingly inconsistent centrifugal and centripetal themes in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................. 1483 I. VOIP: COMMUNICATIONS IN A BORDERLESS WORLD..................... 1488 A. The Traditional Telephone System............................................. 1488 B. VoIP ........................................................................................... 1491 1. What Is VoIP? .................................................................... 1491 2. The Borderless Nature of VoIP Communications ........ 1493 a. Area Codes No Longer Signal Geographic Locations...................................................................... 1494 b. The Mobility of VoIP.................................................. 1495 c. VoIP’s Routing Features ............................................ 1497 3. SoIP: VoIP’s Future.......................................................... 1498 II. THE TRADITIONALLY HARMONIOUS PRINCIPLES OF TERRITORIAL CONTACT AND IMPLIED CONTRACT CLASH IN BORDERLESS COMMUNICATION CASES.................................................................. 1501 A. Twin Pillars: Territorial Sovereignty and Implied Contract in the Theory of Personal Jurisdiction............................................ 1504 1. State Sovereignty: The Significance of Territoriality in the Minimum Contacts Doctrine................................ 1504 2. Due Process Limits: The Implied Contract Theory in Modern Personal Jurisdiction Law................................. 1516 3. Additional Due Process Limits: “Fair Play and Substantial Justice” Concerns.......................................... 1520 B. The Purposefulness Inquiry Presumes that Telephones Direct Communications to Single, Identifiable Locations..................... 1522 C. Cellular Phone Cases: Struggling to Apply the Minimum Contacts Doctrine to Borderless Communications .................... 1527 III. REBUILDING PERSONAL JURISDICTION THEORY FOR A BORDERLESS WORLD ......................................................................... 1529 A. The Twin Pillars Applied to VoIP Communications: The Threat to Extraterritorial Personal Jurisdiction and a Return to Pennoyer............................................................................... 15302006] Minimum Contacts in a Borderless World 1483 B. Privileging State Sovereignty Promotes Efficient Litigation and Notions of Judicial Federalism and National Citizenship... 1533 1. The Purposefulness Inquiry Will Generate Satellite Litigation............................................................................ 1534 2. Constructive Presence Brings Together Some Otherwise Disparate Values Animating Judicial Federalism and National Citizenship............................. 1535 C. Alternative Means for Protecting Nonresidents from a Sovereign State’s Unreasonable Exercise of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction................................................................................. 1538 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 1542 INTRODUCTION Under the “minimum contacts” doctrine, a state’s ability to subject nonresidents to its courts’ jurisdiction rests on the state’s sovereignty over the nonresidents’ litigation-related activities within its territory.1 The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, limits a state’s adjudicative authority to nonresidents whose purposeful affiliation with the state suggests their implicit agreement to the state’s exercise of jurisdiction over them.2 In practice, the U.S. Supreme Court has crafted its sovereignty and due process doctrines to complement one another: it deems valid the exercise of state sovereignty
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