Long-Arm Statute

A long-arm statute is domestic legislation—most often associated with U.S. state law—that authorizes courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over defendants who reside outside the forum, provided those defendants have sufficient connections to the forum. The statute "reaches out" beyond territorial borders to pull a non-resident into court.

In the United States, every state has enacted some form of long-arm statute. Some, like California's (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 410.10), extend jurisdiction to the full limits permitted by the U.S. Constitution. Others, such as New York's CPLR § 302, enumerate specific acts—transacting business, committing a tort, owning property, or contracting to supply goods or services in the state—that trigger jurisdiction.

Long-arm jurisdiction is constrained by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as interpreted in International Shoe Co. v. Washington (1945), which requires that the defendant have "minimum contacts" with the forum such that the suit does not offend "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice." Later cases—World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson (1980), Asahi Metal Industry v. Superior Court (1987), and Daimler AG v. Bauman (2014)—refined this test, distinguishing specific jurisdiction (claim arises from forum contacts) from general jurisdiction (defendant essentially "at home" in the forum).

For international relations, long-arm statutes matter when foreign corporations, officials, or states are sued in U.S. courts—for example, in suits under the Alien Tort Statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or the Anti-Terrorism Act. They also raise comity concerns, as other states sometimes view expansive U.S. jurisdictional reach as extraterritorial overreach. The European Union's Brussels I Regulation (Recast), by contrast, takes a more enumerated approach to cross-border jurisdiction within member states.

Outside the U.S., analogous mechanisms exist but are typically narrower and more closely tied to treaty frameworks or service-of-process rules under the Hague Service Convention (1965).