The Reach of U.S. Law over Foreign Corporations

As global commerce has expanded beyond traditional territorial bounds, the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts has undergone a similar expansion. Long behind us are the days when a foreign corporation could consider itself comfortably beyond the reach of a U.S. court so long as it maintained no “physical presence” in that court's geographical jurisdiction. By the middle of the last century, a clear trend toward “expanding the permissible scope of state jurisdiction over foreign corporations” was already evident, in response to what the U.S Supreme Court in McGee v. Int'l Life Ins. Co. characterized as the “increasing nationalization of commerce.” In more recent years, driven by the increasing internationalization of commerce, the movement toward expanded extraterritorial jurisdiction has continued to gather momentum.