The Delaware courts rejected appellants' jurisdictional challenge by noting that this suit was brought as a quasi in rem proceeding. Since quasi in rem jurisdiction is traditionally based on attachment or seizure of property present in the jurisdiction, not on contacts between the defendant and the State, the courts considered appellants' claimed lack of contacts with Delaware to be unimportant. This categorical analysis assumes the continued soundness of the conceptual structure founded on the century-old case of Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714 (1878).

Pennoyer was an ejectment action brought in federal court under the diversity jurisdiction. Pennoyer, the defendant in that action, held the land under a deed purchased in a sheriff's sale conducted to realize on a judgment for attorney's fees obtained against Neff in a previous action by one Mitchell. At the time of Mitchell's suit in an Oregon State court, Neff was a nonresident of Oregon. An Oregon statute allowed service by publication on nonresidents who had property in the State, and Mitchell had used that procedure to bring Neff

13

a general appearance and defending on the merits. This case is in the same posture as was Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U. S. 469, 485 (1975): "The [Delaware] Supreme Court's judgment is plainly final on the federal issue and is not subject to further review in the state courts. Appellants will be liable for damages if the elements of the state cause of action are proved. They may prevail at trial on nonfederal grounds, it is true, but if the [Delaware] court erroneously upheld the statute, there should be no trial at all."

Accordingly, "consistent with the pragmatic approach that we have followed in the past in determining finality," id., at 486, we conclude that the judgment below is final within the meaning of § 1257.

13 The statute also required that a copy of the summons and complaint be mailed to the defendant if his place of residence was known to the plaintiff or could be determined with reasonable diligence. 95 U. S., at 718. Mitchell had averred that he did not know and could not determine Neff's address, so that the publication was the only "notice" given. Id., at 717.

before the court. The United States Circuit Court for the District of Oregon, in which Neff brought his ejectment action, refused to recognize the validity of the judgment against Neff in Mitchell's suit, and accordingly awarded the land to Neff.11 This Court affirmed.

14

Mr. Justice Field's opinion for the Court focused on the territorial limits of the States' judicial powers. Although recognizing that the States are not truly independent sovereigns, Mr. Justice Field found that their jurisdiction was defined by the "principles of public law" that regulate the relationships among independent nations. The first of those principles was "that every State possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory." The second was "that no State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property without its territory." Id., at 722. Thus, "in virtue of the State's jurisdiction over the property of the non-resident situated within its limits," the state courts "can inquire into that non-resident's obligations to its own citizens . . . to the extent necessary to control the disposition of the property." Id., at 723. The Court recognized that if the conclusions of that inquiry were adverse to the nonresident property owner, his interest in the property would be affected. Ibid. Similarly, if the defendant consented to the jurisdiction of the state courts or was personally served within the State, a judgment could affect his interest in property outside the State. But any attempt "directly" to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over persons or property would offend sister States and exceed the inherent limits of the State's power. A judgment resulting from such an attempt, Mr. Justice Field concluded, was not only unen

14 The Federal Circuit Court based its ruling on defects in Mitchell's affidavit in support of the order for service by publication and in the affidavit by which publication was proved. Id., at 720. Mr. Justice Field indicated that if this Court had confined itself to considering those rulings, the judgment would have been reversed. Id., at 721.

forceable in other States,15 but was also void in the rendering State because it had been obtained in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 732733. See also, e. g., Freeman v. Alderson, 119 U. S. 185, 187-188 (1886).

This analysis led to the conclusion that Mitchell's judgment against Neff could not be validly based on the State's power over persons within its borders, because Neff had not been personally served in Oregon, nor had he consensually appeared before the Oregon court. The Court reasoned that even if Neff had received personal notice of the action, service of process outside the State would have been ineffectual since the State's power was limited by its territorial boundaries. Moreover, the Court held, the action could not be sustained on the basis of the State's power over property within its borders because that property had not been brought before the court by attachment or any other procedure prior to judgment.16 Since the judgment which authorized the sheriff's sale was therefore invalid, the sale transferred no title. Neff regained his land.

From our perspective, the importance of Pennoyer is not its result, but the fact that its principles and corollaries derived from them became the basic elements of the constitu

15 The doctrine that one State does not have to recognize the judgment of another State's courts if the latter did not have jurisdiction was firmly established at the time of Pennoyer. See, e. g., D'Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165 (1851); Boswell's Lessee v. Otis, 9 How. 336 (1850); Kibbe v. Kibbe, 1 Kirby 119 (Conn. Super. Ct. 1786).

16 Attachment was considered essential to the state court's jurisdiction for two reasons. First, attachment combined with substituted service would provide greater assurance that the defendant would actually receive notice of the action than would publication alone. Second, since the court's jurisdiction depended on the defendant's ownership of property in the State and could be defeated if the defendant disposed of that property, attachment was necessary to assure that the court had jurisdiction when the proceedings began and continued to have jurisdiction when it entered judgment. 95 U. S., at 727-728.

tional doctrine governing state-court jurisdiction. See, e. g., Hazard, A General Theory of State-Court Jurisdiction, 1965 Sup. Ct. Rev. 241 (hereafter Hazard). As we have noted, under Pennoyer state authority to adjudicate was based on the jurisdiction's power over either persons or property. This fundamental concept is embodied in the very vocabulary which we use to describe judgments. If a court's jurisdiction is based on its authority over the defendant's person, the action and judgment are denominated "in personam" and can impose a personal obligation on the defendant in favor of the plaintiff. If jurisdiction is based on the court's power over property within its territory, the action is called “in rem” or “quasi in rem." The effect of a judgment in such a case is limited to the property that supports jurisdiction and does not impose a personal liability on the property owner, since he is not before the court." In Pennoyer's terms, the owner is affected only "indirectly" by an in rem judgment adverse to his interest in the property subject to the court's disposition.

By concluding that "[t]he authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established," 95 U. S., at 720, Pennoyer sharply limited the availability of in personam jurisdiction over defendants not resident in the forum State. If a nonresident defendant could not be found in a State, he could not be sued there. On the other hand, since the State in which property

17 "A judgment in rem affects the interests of all persons in designated property. A judgment quasi in rem affects the interests of particular persons in designated property. The latter is of two types. In one the plaintiff is seeking to secure a pre-existing claim in the subject property and to extinguish or establish the nonexistence of similar interests of particular persons. In the other the plaintiff seeks to apply what he concedes to be the property of the defendant to the satisfaction of a claim against him. Restatement, Judgments, 5-9." Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 246 n. 12 (1958).

As did the Court in Hanson, we will for convenience generally use the term "in rem" in place of "in rem and quasi in rem.”

was located was considered to have exclusive sovereignty over that property, in rem actions could proceed regardless of the owner's location. Indeed, since a State's process could not reach beyond its borders, this Court held after Pennoyer that due process did not require any effort to give a property owner personal notice that his property was involved in an in rem proceeding. See, e. g., Ballard v. Hunter, 204 U. S. 241 (1907); Arndt v. Griggs, 134 U. S. 316 (1890); Huling v. Kaw Valley R. Co., 130 U. S. 559 (1889).

The Pennoyer rules generally favored nonresident defendants by making them harder to sue. This advantage was reduced, however, by the ability of a resident plaintiff to satisfy a claim against a nonresident defendant by bringing into court any property of the defendant located in the plaintiff's State. See, e. g., Zammit, Quasi-In-Rem Jurisdiction: Outmoded and Unconstitutional?, 49 St. John's L. Rev. 668, 670 (1975). For example, in For example, in the well-known case of Harris v. Balk, 198 U. S. 215 (1905), Epstein, a resident of Maryland, had a claim against Balk, a resident of North Carolina. Harris, another North Carolina resident, owed money to Balk. When Harris happened to visit Maryland, Epstein garnished his debt to Balk. Harris did not contest the debt to Balk and paid it to Epstein's North Carolina attorney. When Balk later sued Harris in North Carolina, this Court held that the Full Faith and Credit Clause, U. S. Const., Art. IV, § 1, required that Harris' payment to Epstein be treated as a discharge of his debt to Balk. This Court reasoned that the debt Harris owed Balk was an intangible form of property belonging to Balk, and that the location of that property traveled with the debtor. By obtaining personal jurisdiction over Harris, Epstein had "arrested" his debt to Balk, 198 U. S., at 223, and brought it into the Maryland court. Under the structure established by Pennoyer, Epstein was then entitled to proceed against that debt to vindicate his claim against Balk, even though Balk himself was not subject to the juris