Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2017
ISSN
0041-5650
Publisher
UCLA School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
There is a split among state courts about whether personal jurisdiction over an alleged domestic violence perpetrator is required in order to obtain a civil protection order preventing the defendant from contacting the victim. Some courts have held that such orders interfere with the defendant’s liberty interests, and therefore the Due Process Clause requires personal jurisdiction for the issuance of such orders. Other courts have held that personal jurisdiction is not required because such protection orders are analogous to custody and divorce orders, which, under the “status exception,” courts have historically entered without establishing personal jurisdiction over the other party. This Article argues that the focus on the status exception is misplaced and that instead, courts should reframe the way they look at personal jurisdiction in domestic violence cases by applying the principles embedded in the stream of commerce doctrine and the effects test. Drawing upon common threads from each line of cases, the Article proposes a test for domestic violence jurisdiction that focuses on the knowledge of the defendant about the victim’s likely destination if she is forced to flee to another state.
Recommended Citation
Cody Jacobs,
The Stream of Violence: A New Approach to Domestic Violence Personal Jurisdiction
,
64
UCLA Law Review
684
(2017).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/648
Please note the file available on SSRN may not be the final published version of this work.
