Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Winter 2025
Abstract
More than forty years ago, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a uniquely broad and explicit statute directed at out-of-state corporations: registration as a foreign corporation constitutes consent to general personal jurisdiction in the Commonwealth. Pennsylvania's consent-by-registration statute has faced Fourteenth Amendment due process challenges in state and federal courts alike, rising all the way to both the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Supreme Court. This Article first tracks the myriad challenges to the Pennsylvania statute, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in 2023. The Article then argues that the statute's zigzagging path through the court system reveals cracks in the lower tiers of the judicial hierarchy. Rather than binding authority arising from stare decisis, the Pennsylvania law exemplifies a winding authority that invites every court to determine for itself whether the statute violates or comports with due process. Reflecting a legal singularity, the correct law lies in all directions. Each new judge shines a new light through the cracks.
Recommended Citation
Christina Frohock, Winding Authority: Consent by Registration and the Legal Singularity, 70 Wayne L. Rev. 475 (2025).
