Let's Get Personal: Due Process and Personal Jurisdiction as a New Path Forward for Extraterritoriality

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has put fundamental principles of federalism and state sovereignty under attack. Legislation and lawsuits in states nationwide aim to limit the rights of American citizens to travel freely between states in search of medical care. Further, these measures have extraterritorial reach, legally entangling the rights of private citizens in other states who provide medical care even while fully within their own state borders. Scholars have analyzed this development through various doctrinal lenses, including the Dormant Commerce Clause. But these frameworks fail to adequately protect those who are unfortunate enough to be swept into the grip of these laws. This Note proposes a new lens of analysis to examine these laws, one which takes a vigorous view of due process rights while emphasizing the unique role that personal jurisdiction can play in challenging major aspects of these new extraterritorial abortion laws. This lens provides a new means of protecting the right to abortion in a manner supported by both the nation’s history and tradition as well as existing Supreme Court personal jurisdiction and substantive due process precedents. By using existing doctrine to shape a new way forward, this Note presents a solution to an emerging problem that is grounded in existing doctrine.