Courts, both state and federal, confronting facts similar to those here, have rightly rejected the conclusion that a manufacturer selling its products across the USA may evade jurisdiction in any and all States, including the State where its defective product is distributed and causes injury. They have held, instead, that it would undermine principles of fundamental fairness to insulate the foreign manufacturer from accountability in court at the place within the United States where the manufacturer’s products caused injury. See, e.g., Tobin v. Astra Pharmaceutical Prods., Inc., 993 F. 2d 528, 544 (CA6 1993); A. Uberti & C. v. Leonardo, 181 Ariz. 565, 573, 892 P. 2d 1354, 1362 (1995).[Footnote 14]

IV

A

While this Court has not considered in any prior case the now-prevalent pattern presented here—a foreign-country manufacturer enlisting a U. S. distributor to de-velop a market in the United States for the manufacturer’s products—none of the Court’s decisions tug against the judgment made by the New Jersey Supreme Court. McIntyre contends otherwise, citing World-Wide Volkswagen, and Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., Solano Cty., 480 U. S. 102 (1987):clubjuris

World-Wide Volkswagen concerned a New York car dealership that sold solely in the New York market, and a New York distributor who supplied retailers in three States only: New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. 444 U. S., at 289. New York residents had purchased an Audi from the New York dealer and were driving the new vehicle through Oklahoma en route to Arizona. On the road in Oklahoma, another car struck the Audi in the rear, causing a fire which severely burned the Audi’s occupants. Id., at 288. Rejecting the Oklahoma courts’ assertion of jurisdiction over the New York dealer and distributor, this Court observed that the defendants had done nothing to serve the market for cars in Oklahoma. Id., at 295–298. Jurisdiction, the Court held, could not be based on the customer’s unilateral act of driving the vehicle to Oklahoma. Id., at 298; see Asahi, 480 U. S., at 109 (opinion of O’Connor, J.) (World-Wide Volkswagen “rejected the as- sertion that a consumer’s unilateral act of bringing the defendant’s product into the forum State was a sufficient constitutional basis for personal jurisdiction over the defendant”):clubjuris

Notably, the foreign manufacturer of the Audi in World-Wide Volkswagen did not object to the jurisdiction of the Oklahoma courts and the U. S. importer abandoned its initially stated objection. 444 U. S., at 288, and n. 3. And most relevant here, the Court’s opinion indicates that an objection to jurisdiction by the manufacturer or national distributor would have been unavailing. To reiterate, the Court said in World-Wide Volkswagen that, when a manufacturer or distributor aims to sell its product to customers in several States, it is reasonable “to subject it to suit in [any] one of those States if its allegedly defective [product] has there been the source of injury.” Id., at 297:clubjuris

Asahi arose out of a motorcycle accident in California. Plaintiff, a California resident injured in the accident, sued the Taiwanese manufacturer of the motorcycle’s tire tubes, claiming that defects in its product caused the accident. The tube manufacturer cross-claimed against Asahi, the Japanese maker of the valve assembly, and Asahi contested the California courts’ jurisdiction. By the time the case reached this Court, the injured plaintiff had settled his case and only the indemnity claim by the Taiwanese company against the Japanese valve-assembly manufacturer remained:clubjuris

The decision was not a close call. The Court had before it a foreign plaintiff, the Taiwanese manufacturer, and a foreign defendant, the Japanese valve-assembly maker, and the indemnification dispute concerned a transaction between those parties that occurred abroad. All agreed on the bottom line: The Japanese valve-assembly manufacturer was not reasonably brought into the California courts to litigate a dispute with another foreign party over a transaction that took place outside the United States:clubjuris

Given the confines of the controversy, the dueling opinions of Justice Brennan and Justice O’Connor were hardly necessary. How the Court would have “estimate[d] … the inconveniences,” see International Shoe, 326 U. S., at 317 (internal quotation marks omitted), had the injured Californian originally sued Asahi is a debatable question. Would this Court have given the same weight to the burdens on the foreign defendant had those been counterbalanced by the burdens litigating in Japan imposed on the local California plaintiff? Cf. Calder v. Jones, 465 U. S. 783, 788 (1984) (a plaintiff’s contacts with the forum “may be so manifold as to permit jurisdiction when it would not exist in their absence”):clubjuris

In any event, Asahi, unlike McIntyre UK, did not itself seek out customers in the United States, it engaged no distributor to promote its wares here, it appeared at no tradeshows in the United States, and, of course, it had no Web site advertising its products to the world. Moreover, Asahi was a component-part manufacturer with “little control over the final destination of its products once they were delivered into the stream of commerce.” A. Uberti, 181 Ariz., at 572, 892 P. 2d, at 1361. It was important to the Court in Asahi that “those who use Asahi components in their final products, and sell those products in California, [would be] subject to the application of California tort law.” 480 U. S., at 115 (majority opinion). To hold that Asahi controls this case would, to put it bluntly, be dead wrong.[Footnote 15]

B

The Court’s judgment also puts United States plaintiffs at a disadvantage in comparison to similarly situated complainants elsewhere in the world. Of particular note, within the European Union, in which the United Kingdom is a participant, the jurisdiction New Jersey would have exercised is not at all exceptional. The European Regulation on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments provides for the exercise of specific jurisdiction “in matters relating to tort … in the courts for the place where the harmful event occurred.” Council Reg. 44/2001, Art. 5, 2001 O. J. (L. 12) 4.[Footnote 16] The European Court of Justice has interpreted this prescription to authorize jurisdiction either where the harmful act occurred or at the place of injury. See Handelskwekerij G. J. Bier B. V. v. Mines de Potasse d’Alsace S. A., 1976 E. C. R. 1735, 1748–1749.[Footnote 17]

V

The commentators who gave names to what we now call “general jurisdiction” and “specific jurisdiction” anticipated that when the latter achieves its full growth, considerations of litigational convenience and the respective situations of the parties would determine when it is appropriate to subject a defendant to trial in the plaintiff’s community. See von Mehren & Trautman 1166–1179. Litigational considerations include “the convenience of witnesses and the ease of ascertaining the governing law.” Id., at 1168–1169. As to the parties, courts would differently appraise two situations: (1) cases involving a substantially local plaintiff, like Nicastro, injured by the activity of a defendant engaged in interstate or international trade; and (2) cases in which the defendant is a natural or legal person whose economic activities and legal involvements are largely home-based, i.e., entities without designs to gain substantial revenue from sales in distant markets. See id., at 1167–1169.[Footnote 18] As the attached appendix of illustrative cases indicates, courts presented with von Mehren and Trautman’s first scenario—a local plaintiff injured by the activity of a manufacturer seeking to exploit a multistate or global market—have repeatedly confirmed that jurisdiction is appropriately exercised by courts of the place where the product was sold and caused injury:clubjuris

*  *  *

For the reasons stated, I would hold McIntyre UK answerable in New Jersey for the harm Nicastro suffered at his workplace in that State using McIntyre UK’s shearing machine. While I dissent from the Court’s judgment, I take heart that the plurality opinion does not speak for the Court, for that opinion would take a giant step away from the “notions of fair play and substantial justice” underlying International Shoe. 326 U. S., at 316 (internal quotation marks omitted):clubjuris

APPENDIX

Illustrative cases upholding exercise of personal jurisdiction over an alien or out-of-state corporation that, through a distributor, targeted a national market, including any and all States:[Footnote 19]

Clune v. Alimak AB, 233 F. 3d 538, 544 (CA8 2000) (wrongful-death action against the Swedish manufacturer of a construction hoist that allegedly caused a workplace death in Missouri; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Missouri, the Eighth Circuit stated: “Although we can imagine a case where a foreign manufacturer selects discrete regional distributors for the purpose of penetrating the markets in some states to the exclusion of others, that situation is not before us.” In this case, the for- eign manufacturer had “successfully employ[ed] one or two distributors to cover the [entire] United States[,] intend[ing] to reap the benefit of sales in every state where those distributors market.” Were the court to conclude that the manufacturer “did not intend its products to flow into Missouri,” the court “would be bound to the conclusion that the [manufacturer] did not intend its products to flow into any of the United States.”):clubjuris

Kernan v. Kurz-Hastings, Inc., 175 F. 3d 236, 242–244 (CA2 1999) (products liability action against the Japanese manufacturer of an allegedly defective stamping press that caused a workplace injury in New York; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in New York, the Second Circuit stated that an “exclusive sales rights agreement” between the Japanese manufacturer and a Pennsylvania distributor “contemplates that [the distributor] will sell [the manufacturer’s] machines in North America and throughout the world, serv[ing] as evidence of [the manufacturer’s] attempt to serve the New York market, albeit indirectly”):clubjuris

Barone v. Rich Bros. Interstate Display Fireworks Co., 25 F. 3d 610, 613–615 (CA8 1994) (products liability suit against a Japanese fireworks manufacturer for injuries sustained in Nebraska; Eighth Circuit held the manufacturer amenable to suit in Nebraska, although the manufacturer had no distributor or sales agents in that State, did not advertise in Nebraska, and claimed it was unaware that its distributors sold products there; Court of Appeals stated: “In this age of NAFTA and GATT, one can expect further globalization of commerce, and it is only reasonable for companies that distribute allegedly defective products through regional distributors in this country to anticipate being haled into court by plaintiffs in their home states.”):clubjuris

   Tobin v. Astra Pharmaceutical Prods., Inc., 993 F. 2d 528, 544 (CA6 1993) (products liability action against the Dutch pharmaceutical manufacturer of a drug alleged to have caused Kentucky resident’s heart disease; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Kentucky, the Sixth Circuit reasoned: “[Defendant] argues that it has done nothing in particular to purposefully avail itself of the Kentucky market as distinguished from any other state in the union. If we were to accept defendant’s argument on this point, a foreign manufacturer could insulate itself from liability in each of the fifty states simply by using an independent national distributor to market its products.”):clubjuris

   Hedrick v. Daiko Shoji Co., 715 F. 2d 1355, 1358 (CA9 1983) (products liability suit arising from injuries plaintiff sustained in Oregon caused by an allegedly defective wire-rope splice manufactured in Japan; holding the Japanese manufacturer amenable to suit in Oregon, the Ninth Cir-cuit noted that the manufacturer “performed a forum-related act when it produced a splice that it knew was destined for ocean-going vessels serving United States ports, including those of Oregon”):clubjuris

   Oswalt v. Scripto, Inc., 616 F. 2d 191, 200 (CA5 1980) (products liability action stemming from an injury plaintiff sustained in Texas when using a cigarette lighter made in Japan; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Texas, the Fifth Circuit noted that the manufacturer “had every reason to believe its product would be sold to a nation-wide market, that is, in any or all states”):clubjuris

Stokes v. L. Geismar, S.A., 815 F. Supp. 904, 907 (ED Va. 1993), aff ’d on other grounds, 16 F. 3d 411 (CA4 1994) (action by worker injured in Virginia while using a rail-cutting saw manufactured by a French corporation; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Virginia, the District Court noted that there was “no evidence of any attempt … to limit th[e] U. S. marketing strategy to avoid Virginia or any other particular state”):clubjuris

Felty v. Conaway Processing Equipment Co., 738 F. Supp. 917, 919–920 (ED Pa. 1990) (personal injury suit against the Dutch manufacturer of a poultry processing machine that allegedly caused injury in Pennsylvania; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Pennsylvania, the District Court observed that the manufacturer “clearly and purposefully used [distributors] to deal in the international market for poultry processing equipment” and was “well aware that its equipment was being sold for use in the United States, including Pennsylvania”):clubjuris

   Scanlan v. Norma Projektil Fabrik, 345 F. Supp. 292, 293 (Mont. 1972) (products liability action occasioned by defect in ammunition used while hunting in Montana; plaintiff sued the Swedish ammunition manufacturer; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in Montana, the District Court noted that the distributor intended “a nationwide product distribution”):clubjuris

Ex parte DBI, Inc., 23 So. 3d 635, 654–655 (Ala. 2009) (wrongful-death action arising out of an automobile accident in Alabama; plaintiff sued the Korean manufacturer of an allegedly defective seatbelt; Supreme Court of Alabama held the manufacturer amenable to suit in Alabama, although the manufacturer had supplied its seatbelts to the car maker in Korea and “maintain[ed] there [was] no evidence … showing that it knew its products were being marketed in Alabama”):clubjuris

A. Uberti & C. v. Leonardo, 181 Ariz. 565, 573, 892 P. 2d 1354, 1362 (1995) (wrongful-death action against the Italian manufacturer of an allegedly defective handgun that caused child’s death in Arizona; Arizona Supreme Court stated: “[F]or all this record shows, Defendant never heard of Arizona. This raises the following question: Having shown that the gun was knowingly designed for and exported to exploit the market of the United States or western United States, must Plaintiffs additionally show that Defendant had the specific intent to market the gun in Arizona, or is it enough to show that Defendant intended to market it in any state, group of states, or all states? We conclude that only the latter is necessary.”):clubjuris

Hill by Hill v. Showa Denko, K. K., 188 W. Va. 654, 661, 425 S. E. 2d 609, 616 (1992) (products liability suit against the Japanese manufacturer of a sleep aid alleged to have caused West Virginia plaintiff’s blood disorder; holding the manufacturer amenable to suit in West Virginia, that State’s Supreme Court noted that the manufacturer had profited from sales in the United States and considered it unfair to “requir[e] the plaintiff to travel to Japan to litigate th[e] case”).

Footnote 1

New Jersey is home to nearly 100 ISRI members. See Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., Member Directory, http://www.isri.org/ imis15_prod/core/directory.aspx (as visited June 24, 2011, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).

Footnote 2

McIntyre America filed for bankruptcy in 2001, is no longer operating, and has not participated in this lawsuit. Brief for Petitioner 3. After “the demise of … McIntyre America,” McIntyre UK authorized a Texas-based company to serve as exclusive United States distributor of McIntyre UK shears. App. 52a–53a.

Footnote 3

McIntyre UK resisted Nicastro’s efforts to determine whether other McIntyre machines had been sold to New Jersey customers. See id., at 100a–101a. McIntyre did allow that McIntyre America “may have resold products it purchased from [McIntyre UK] to a buyer in New Jersey,” id., at 117a, but said it kept no record of the ultimate destination of machines it shipped to its distributor, ibid. A private investigator engaged by Nicastro found at least one McIntyre UK machine, of unspecified type, in use in New Jersey. Id., at 140a–144a. But McIntyre UK objected that the investigator’s report was “unsworn and based upon hearsay.” Reply Brief 10. Moreover, McIntyre UK maintained, no evidence showed that the machine the investigator found in New Jersey had been “sold into [that State].” Ibid.

Footnote 4

Compare Brilmayer, Rights, Fairness, and Choice of Law, 98 Yale L. J. 1277, 1304–1306 (1989) (hereinafter Brilmayer) (criticizing as circular jurisdictional theories founded on “consent” or “[s]ubmission to state authority”), Perdue, Personal Jurisdiction and the Beetle in the Box, 32 Boston College L. Rev. 529, 536–544 (1991) (same), with Trangsrud, The Federal Common Law of Personal Jurisdiction, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 849, 884–885 (1989) (endorsing a consent-based doctrine of personal jurisdiction), Epstein, Consent, Not Power, as the Basis of Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 1, 2, 30–32 (urging that “the consent principle neatly explains the dynamics of many of our jurisdictional doctrines,” but recognizing that in tort cases, the victim ordinarily should be able to sue in the place where the harm occurred).

Footnote 5

But see ante, at 4–8 (plurality opinion) (maintaining that a forum may be fair and reasonable, based on its links to the episode in suit, yet off limits because the defendant has not submitted to the State’s authority). The plurality’s notion that jurisdiction over foreign corporations depends upon the defendant’s “submission,” ante, at 6, seems scarcely different from the long-discredited fiction of implied consent. It bears emphasis that a majority of this Court’s members do not share the plurality’s view.

Footnote 6

Last year, the United States imported nearly 2 trillion dollars in foreign goods. Census Bureau, U. S. International Trade in Goods and Services (Apr. 2011), p. 1, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf (as visited June 24, 2011, and in Clerk of Court’s case file). Capital goods, such as the metal shear machine that injured Nicastro, accounted for almost 450 billion dollars in imports for 2010. Id., at 6. New Jersey is the fourth-largest destination for manufactured commodities imported into the United States, after California, Texas, and New York. Id., FT–900 Supplement, p. 3.

Footnote 7

This provision was modeled in part on the Uniform Interstate and International Procedure Act. See N. Y. Legislative Doc. 90, Judicial Conference of the State of New York, 11th Annual Report 132–147 (1966). Connecticut’s long-arm statute also uses the “derives substantial revenue from interstate or international commerce” formulation. See Conn. Gen. Stat. §52–59b(a) (2011).

Footnote 8

State long-arm provisions allow the exercise of jurisdiction subject only to a due process limitation in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia. 4 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure §1068, pp. 577–578, n. 12 (3d ed. 2002).

Footnote 9

The plurality objects to a jurisdictional approach “divorced from traditional practice.” Ante, at 5. But “the fundamental transformation of our national economy,” this Court has recognized, warrants enlargement of “the permissible scope of state jurisdiction over foreign corporations and other nonresidents.” McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U. S. 220 , 222–223 (1957).

Footnote 10

See von Mehren & Trautman 1167 (“[C]onsiderations of litigational convenience, particularly with respect to the taking of evidence, tend in accident cases to point insistently to the community in which the accident occurred.”).

Footnote 11

Historically, “tort cases were governed by the place where the last act giving rise to a claim occurred—that is, the place of injury.” Brilmayer 1291–1292. Even as many jurisdictions have modified the traditional rule of lex loci delicti, the location of injury continues to hold sway in choice-of-law analysis in tort cases. See generally Whytock, Myth of Mess? International Choice of Law in Action, 84 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 719 (2009).

Footnote 12

The plurality suggests that the Due Process Clause might permit a federal district court in New Jersey, sitting in diversity and applying New Jersey law, to adjudicate McIntyre UK’s liability to Nicastro. See ante, at 10–11. In other words, McIntyre UK might be compelled to bear the burden of traveling to New Jersey and defending itself there under New Jersey’s products liability law, but would be entitled to federal adjudication of Nicastro’s state-law claim. I see no basis in the Due Process Clause for such a curious limitation.

Footnote 13

“For purposes of international law and foreign relations, the separate identities of individual states of the Union are generally irrelevant.” Born, Reflections on Judicial Jurisdiction in International Cases, 17 Ga. J. Int’l & Comp. L. 1, 36 (1987). See also Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 63 (1941) (“For local interests the several States of the Union exist, but for national purposes, embracing our relations with foreign nations, we are but one people, one nation, one power.”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States §421, Comment f, p. 307 (1986) (“International law … does not concern itself with the allocation of jurisdiction among domestic courts within a [nation,] for example, between national and local courts in a federal system.”).

Footnote 14

For a more complete set of examples, see Appendix, infra, at 20–24.

Footnote 15

The plurality notes the low volume of sales in New Jersey, ante, at 3, 11. A $24,900 shearing machine, however, is unlikely to sell in bulk worldwide, much less in any given State. By dollar value, the price of a single machine represents a significant sale. Had a manufacturer sold in New Jersey $24,900 worth of flannel shirts, see Nelson v. Park Industries, Inc., 717 F. 2d 1120 (CA7 1983), cigarette lighters, see Oswalt v. Scripto, Inc., 616 F. 2d 191 (CA5 1980), or wire-rope splices, see Hedrick v. Daiko Shoji Co., 715 F. 2d 1355 (CA9 1983), the Court would presumably find the defendant amenable to suit in that State.

Footnote 16

The Regulation replaced the “European” or “Brussels” Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, entered into in 1968 by the original Common Market member states. In the interim, the Lugano Convention “extended the Brussels Convention scheme to [European Free Trade Association] countries.” Clermont & Palmer, Exorbitant Jurisdiction, 58 Me. L. Rev. 474, 491, n. 82 (2006).

Footnote 17

For a concise comparison of the European regime and this Court’s decisions, see Weintraub, A Map Out of the Personal Jurisdiction Labyrinth, 28 U. C. Davis L. Rev. 531, 550–554 (1995).

Footnote 18

Assigning weight to the local or international stage on which the parties operate would, to a considerable extent, answer the concerns expressed by Justice Breyer. See ante, at 5–7 (opinion concurring in judgment).

Footnote 19

The listed cases are by no means exhaustive of decisions fitting this pattern. For additional citations, see Brief for Public Citizen, Inc., as Amicus Curiae 16, n. 5.