The “Longitude Problem”: Determining Purposeful Availment on the Internet’s High Seas

Cassandra Simmons*

The ancients’ contemplation of the heavens resembles the American jurist’s deliberation of due process. In addition to the philosophic ends of the astronomer, navigators looked to the constellations to determine their position in navigating the land or seas. Similarly, jurists look to due process to determine the extent of their authority over a dispute in navigating litigating parties to resolution. One component of the due process analysis is personal jurisdiction.² The limits of a State’s exercise of personal jurisdiction rely on the history, precedent, and policy justifications expounding the meaning of the Constitution’s Due Process Clause.³ Yet no text alone can completely capture the fullness of personal jurisdiction.⁴ Nor can a telescope capture the nature of the stars.⁵

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*J.D., Notre Dame Law School, 2026; B.S., B.A., Purdue University, 2023. Thank you to Professor Derek Muller, Professor Jay Tidmarsh, Joshua Geesling, and friends from the Notre Dame Law School community for invaluable feedback, comments, and guidance throughout the preparation of this Note. Thank you to my friends on the Notre Dame Law Review and to my fellow “mariners” who have made this Note and all other work possible and enjoyable. All errors are my own.

2 See, e.g., World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291 (1980).

3 See U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1; see also Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes, The Predictability Principle in Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine: A Case Study on the Effects of a “Generally” Too Broad, but “Specifically” Too Narrow Approach to Minimum Contacts, 57 BAYLOR L. REV. 135, 141 (2005).

4 See THE FEDERALIST NO. 37, at 229 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961) (“But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas.”); see also A.W.B. Simpson, Legal Iconoclasts and Legal Ideals, 58 U. CIN. L. REV. 819, 838 (1990) (“[T]he law is, in truth, a science . . . . [I]ts home is on earth, it belongs to our imperfect state, and not to the perfection of heaven.” (quoting JOEL PRENTISS BISHOP, THE FIRST BOOK OF THE LAW bk. 2, at 58–59 (Boston, Little, Brown & Co. 1868))); GEORGE ELIOT, MIDDLEMARCH 140 (London, William Blackwood & Sons new ed. 1891) (“Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague.”).

5 As Immanuel Kant writes: The observations and calculations of astronomers have taught us much that is worthy of admiration, but most important, probably, is that they have exposed for us the abyss of our ignorance, which without this information human reason could never have imagined to be so great; reflection on this ignorance has to produce a great alteration in the determination of the final aims of the use of our reason. IMMANUEL KANT, CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 519 (§ II, A 575/B603) n.* (Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood eds. & trans., 2d ed. 2025).