Page:Mallory v. Norfolk Southern.pdf/29

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MALLORY v. NORFOLK SOUTHERN R. CO.

Jackson, J., concurring

if our personal-jurisdiction cases would normally preclude the State from subjecting a defendant to its authority under the circumstances presented. Ibid.

Waiver is thus a critical feature of the personal-jurisdiction analysis. And there is more than one way to waive personal-jurisdiction rights, as Insurance Corp. of Ireland also clarified. A defendant can waive its rights by explicitly or implicitly consenting to litigate future disputes in a particular State’s courts. Id., at 703–704. A defendant might also fail to follow specific procedural rules, and end up waiving the right to object to personal jurisdiction as a consequence. Id., at 705–706. Or a defendant can voluntarily invoke certain benefits from a State that are conditioned on submitting to the State’s jurisdiction. Id., at 704 (citing Adam v. Saenger, 303 U. S. 59, 67–68 (1938)).

Regardless of whether a defendant relinquishes its personal-jurisdiction rights expressly or constructively, the basic teaching of Insurance Corp. of Ireland is the same: When a defendant chooses to engage in behavior that “amount[s] to a legal submission to the jurisdiction of the court,” the Due Process Clause poses no barrier to the court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction. 456 U. S., at 704–705.

In my view, there is no question that Norfolk Southern waived its personal-jurisdiction rights here. As the Court ably explains, Norfolk Southern agreed to register as a foreign corporation in Pennsylvania in exchange for the ability to conduct business within the Commonwealth and receive associated benefits. Ante, at 10–11; see also post, at 2 (Alito, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Moreover, when Norfolk Southern made that decision, the jurisdictional consequences of registration were clear. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §5301(a)(2)(i) (1981) (expressly linking “qualification as a foreign corporation under the laws of th[e] Commonwealth” to the “exercise [of] general personal jurisdiction”); 266 A. 3d 542, 569 (Pa. 2021) (acknowledging