Burnham V. Superior Court of California - Justice White's Opinion

Justice White's Opinion

In a short opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, Justice Byron R. White stated that "he rule allowing jurisdiction to be obtained over a nonresident by personal service in the forum state, without more, has been and is so widely accepted throughout this country that I could not possibly strike it down, either on its face or as applied in this case, on the ground that it denies due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment." In White's view, while the Supreme Court has authority to strike down even traditional accepted procedures that do not provide due process, there was no basis for doing so in this case. There was no showing that allowing service of process within a state to provide a basis for jurisdiction "is so arbitrary and lacking in common sense in so many instances that it should be held violative of Due Process in every case." To avoid endless litigation, Justice White concluded that challenges to the fairness of jurisdiction based on service in individual cases need not be entertained, "t least ... where presence in the forum state is intentional, which would almost always be the fact."