Coerced Corporate Consent

Abstract Corporations are not human beings, but they have rights, including the constitutional right of due process. The United States Supreme Court recently held in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. that due process is satisfied when a state requires that a corporation consent to personal jurisdiction before it can conduct business in that state. The Court did not analyze, however, whether such business registration statutes can be coercive and, if so, when. These unanswered questions...