Court Opinion

ID: 9431352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:06.595237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:28.109391
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall and Justice Blackmun join, concurring in the judgment.
We acknowledged last Term, and the Court reiterates today, ante, at 699, that the terms of the Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, Nov. 15, 1965, [1969] 20 U. S. T. 361, T. I. A. S. No. 6638, are “mandatory,” not “optional” with respect to any transmission that Article 1 covers. Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v. United States District Court, 482 U. S. 522, 534, and n. 15 (1987). Even so, the Court holds, and I agree, that a litigant may, consistent with the Convention, serve process on a foreign corporation by serving its wholly owned domestic subsidiary, because such process is not “service abroad” within the meaning of Article 1. The Court reaches that conclusion, however, by depriving the Convention of any mandatory effect, for in the Court’s view the “forum’s internal law” defines conclusively whether a particular process is “service abroad,” which is covered by the Convention, or domestic service, which is not. Ante, at 704. I do not join the Court’s opinion because I find it implausible that the Convention’s framers intended to leave each contracting nation, and each of the 50 States within our Nation, free to decide for itself under what circumstances, if any, the Convention would control. Rather, in my view, the words “service abroad,” read in light of the negotiating history, embody a substantive standard that limits a forum’s latitude to deem service complete domestically.
The first of two objectives enumerated in the Convention’s preamble is “to create appropriate means to ensure that judicial . . . documents to be served abroad shall be brought to the notice of the addressee in sufficient time . . . .” 20 U. S. T., at 362. See also ante, at 702-703. Until the Con*709vention was implemented, the contracting nations followed widely divergent practices for serving judicial documents across international borders, some of which did not ensure any notice, much less timely notice, and therefore often produced unfair default judgments. See generally International Co-Operation in Litigation: Europe (H. Smit ed. 1965); 3 1965 Conférence de la Haye de Droit International Privé, Actes et Documents de la Dixième Session (Notification) 11-12 (1965) (hereinafter-3 Actes et Documents). Particularly controversial was a procedure, common among civil-law countries, called “notification au parquet,” which permitted delivery of process to a local official who was then ordinarily supposed to transmit the document abroad through diplomatic or. other channels.' See S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 11-12, 14-16 (1967) (S. Exec. Rep. No. 6); S. Doc. C, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 5-6, 21 (1967) (S. Exec. Doc. G). Typically, service was deemed complete upon delivery of the document to the official whether or not the official succeeded in transmitting it to the defendant and whether or not the defendant otherwise received notice of the pending lawsuit.1
*710The United States delegation to the Convention objected to notification au parquet as inconsistent with “the requirements of ‘due process of law’ under the Federal. Constitution.” 3 Actes et Documents 128 (citations omitted). The head of the delegation has derided its “‘[injustice, extravagance, [and] absurdity . . . .’” Amram 651 (citation omitted). In its classic formulation, he observed, notification au parquet “ ‘totally sacrificed all rights of the defense in favor of the plaintiff.’” Id., at 652, n. 9 (citation omitted). The Convention’s official reporter noted similar “‘spirited criticisms of the system’ . . . which we wish to see eliminated.” 3 Actes et Documents 76 (translated).
In response to this and other concerns, the Convention prescribes the exclusive means for service of process, emanating from one contracting nation and culminating in another. As the Court observes, the Convention applies only when the document is to be “transmit[ted] ... for service abroad”;, it covers not every transmission of judicial documents abroad, but only those transmissions abroad that constitute formal “service.” See ante, at 700. It is common ground that the Convention governs when the procedure prescribed by the internal law of the forum nation or state provides that service is not complete until the document is’ transmitted abroad. That is not to say, however, as does the Court, that the forum nation may designate any type of service “domestic” and thereby avoid application of the Convention.
Admittedly, as the Court points out, ibid., the Convention’s language does not prescribe a precise standard to distinguish between “domestic” service and “service abroad.” But the Court’s solution leaves contracting nations free to ignore its terms entirely, converting its command into exhortation. Under the Court’s analysis, for example, a forum nation could prescribe direct mail service to any foreigner and deem service effective upon' deposit in the mailbox, or could arbitrarily designate a domestic agent for any foreign defendant and deem service complete upon receipt domestically by *711the agent even though there is little likelihood that service would ever reach the defendant. In fact, so far as I can tell, the Court’s interpretation permits any contracting nation to revive notification au parquet so long as the nation’s internal law deems service complete domestically, but cf. ante, at 704, even though, as the Court concedes, “such methods of service are the least likely to provide a defendant with actual notice,” and even though “[t]here is no question but that the Conference wanted to eliminate notification au parquet,” ante, at 703 (citation omitted).
The Court adheres to this interpretation, which (in the Court’s words) “does not necessarily advance” the primary purpose that the Convention itself announces, ante, at 705, notwithstanding its duty to read the Convention “with a view to effecting the objects and purposes of the States thereby contracting.” Rocca v. Thompson, 223 U. S. 317, 331-332 (1912). See Factor v. Laubenheimer, 290 U. S. 276, 293-294 (1933); Wright v. Henkel, 190 U. S. 40, 57 (1903). Even assuming any quantum of evidence from the negotiating history would suffice to support an interpretation so fundamentally at odds with the Convention’s primary purpose, the evidence the Court amasses in support of its reading — two interim comments by the reporter on initial drafts of the Convention suggesting that the forum’s internal law would dictate whether a particular form of service implicates the Convention-falls far short. See ante, at 701-702.
In the first place, the reporter’s comments were by no means uncontroversial. One participant, for example, directly challenged the “report[’s] allusion ... to the danger that the court hearing the proceeding could decide that there were no grounds for service,” and observed that “[n]ow, the preamble of [the] draft specifies the objective of the convention, which is to ensure the service of writs to persons in foreign countries in order to guarantee that these persons will have knowledge of them. ” 3 Actes et Documents 165 (United Kingdom delegate) (translation) (emphasis added). *712In fact, the delegates considered a version of Article 1 explicitly prescribing that the Convention’s scope would be defined “‘according to the law of the petitioning state,”’ id., at 167 (quoting proposal of Yugoslavian delegate) (translation), but rejected the proposal at least in part “because it would allow [domestic] law to determine the cases in which transmission is not obligatory.” Ibid. (Italian delegate) (translation).
If the delegates did not resolve their differences upon tabling the proposal, they apparently did by the time the official reporter issued his Rapport Explicatif. This final report, which presumably supersedes all interim comments, stresses “the opinion of the Third Commission [that] the Convention was ‘obligatory,’” making no reference to internal law. 3 Actes et Documents 366 (translation). By way of example, the Rapport acknowledges that a literal reading of the Convention might raise doubts as to the Convention’s coverage of notification au parquet, yet announces the understanding of the drafting commission that the Convention would prohibit such service.2 Thus, reading Article 1 “‘in the liberal spirit in which it is intended[,]’” to address “‘the hardship and injustice, which [the Convention] seeks to relieve,”’ id., at 367 (citation omitted), the Rapport interprets the Convention to impose a substantive standard proscribing notification au parquet whether the forum nation deems the service “domestic” or “abroad.” That substantive standard is captured in the Rapport's admonition that
“‘[a]ll of the transmission channels (prescribed by the convention) must have as a consequence the fact that the act reach the addressee in due time. That is a require*713ment of justice, which assumes its full importance when the act to be transmitted is an act instituting proceedings.’” Ibid, (translation) (footnote omitted; emphasis added).
The Court belittles the Rapport’s significance by presuming that the reporter assumed, as a matter of the internal law of the various nations then permitting notification au parquet, that such service always required transmission abroad, and therefore would always have been deemed “service abroad.” See ante, at 703-704. But the above-cited passage purports to interpret the Convention, not to survey the various forms of notification au parquet then prevalent, and does not so much as hint at the possibility that notification au parquet might continue if the domestic law of a forum nation were to deem it “domestic.” Moreover, the assumption that the Court imputes to the Rapport is inaccurate; as noted above, notification au parquet was typically deemed complete upon delivery to the local official. See supra, at 709, and n. 1. Any requirement of transmission abroad was no more essential to formal service than is the informal arrangement by which a domestic subsidiary might transmit documents served on it as an agent for its foreign parent. See, e. g., 3 Actes et Documents 169. Thus, if the Court entertains the possibility that the Convention bans notification au parquet under all circumstances, ante, at 704, it can only be because (notwithstanding the Court’s stated analysis) the Convention, read in light of its negotiating history, sets some substantive limit on the forum state’s latitude to deem such service “domestic.”
Significantly, our own negotiating delegation, whose contemporaneous views are “entitled to great weight,” Société Nationale, 482 U. S., at 536, n. 19, took seriously the Rapport’s conclusion that the Convention is more than just preca-tory. The delegation’s report applauded the Convention as “mak[ing] substantial changes in the practices of many of the civil law countries, moving their practices in the direction of the U. S. approach to international judicial assistance and our *714concepts of due process in the service of process.” S. Exec. Doc. C, at 20 (emphasis added). The delegation’s chief negotiator emphasized that “the convention sets up the minimum standards of international judicial assistance which each country which ratifies the convention must offer to all others who ratify.” S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, at 13 (statement by Philip W. Amram) (emphasis in original). Then-Secretary of State Rusk reiterated the same point,3 as did the State Department’s Deputy Legal Advisor,4 and President Johnson.5 The repeated references to “due process” were not, of course, intended to suggest that every contracting nation submitted itself to the intricacies of our constitutional jurisprudence. Rather, they were shorthand formulations of the requirement, common to both due process and the Convention, that process directed on a party abroad should be designed so that the documents “reach the addressee in due time,” 3 Actes et Documents 367 (translation).
The negotiating history and the uniform interpretation announced by our own negotiators confirm that the Convention limits a forum’s ability to deem service “domestic,” thereby avoiding the Convention’s terms. Admittedly, the Convention does not precisely define the contours. But that imprecision does not absolve us of our responsibility to apply the Convention mandatorily, any more than imprecision permits us to discard the words “due process of law,” U. S. Const., Arndt. 14, § 1. And however difficult it might be in some circumstances to discern the Convention’s precise limits, it is *715remarkably easy to conclude that the Convention does not prohibit the type of service at issue here. Service on a wholly owned, closely controlled subsidiary is reasonably calculated to reach the parent “in due time” as the Convention requires. See, e. g., 9 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of Law of Private Corporations §4412, p. 400 (rev. ed. 1985). That is, in fact, what our own Due Process Clause requires, see Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 314-315 (1950), and since long before the Convention’s implementation our law has permitted such service, see, e..g., Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Co., 342 U. S. 437, 444-445 (1952); Latimer v. S/A Industrias Reunidas F. Matarazzo, 175 F. 2d 184, 185 (CA2 1949) (L. Hand, J.). This is significant because our own negotiators made clear to the Senate their understanding that the Convention would require no major changes in federal or state service-of-process rules.6 Thus, it is unsurprising that nothing in the negotiating history suggests that the contracting nations were dissatisfied with the practice at issue here, of which they were surely aware, much less that they intended to abolish it like they intended to abolish notification au parquet. And since notice served on a wholly owned domestic subsidiary is infinitely more likely to reach the foreign parent’s attention than was notice served au parquet (or by any other procedure that the negotiators singled out for criticism) there is no reason to interpret the Convention to bar it.
*716My difference with the Court does not affect the outcome of this case, and, given that any process emanating from our courts must comply with due process, it may have little practical consequence in future cases that come before us. But cf. S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, at 15 (statement by Philip W. Amram suggesting that Convention may require “a minor change in the practice of some of our States in long-arm and automobile accident cases” where “service on the appropriate official need be accompanied only by a minimum effort to notify the defendant”). Our Constitution does not, however, bind other nations haling our citizens into their courts. Our citizens rely instead primarily on the forum nation’s compliance with the Convention, which the Senate believed would “provide increased protection (due process) for American Citizens who are involved in litigation abroad.” Id., at 3. And while other nations are not bound by the Court’s pronouncement that the Convention lacks obligatory force, after today’s decision their courts will surely sympathize little with any United States national pleading that a judgment violates the Convention because (notwithstanding any local characterization) service was “abroad.”
It is perhaps heartening to “think that [no] countr[y] will draft its internal laws deliberately so as to circumvent the Convention in cases in which it would be appropriate to transmit judicial documents for service abroad,” ante, at 705, although from the defendant’s perspective “circumvention” (which, according to the Court, entails no more than exercising a prerogative not to be bound) is equally painful whether deliberate or not. The fact remains, however, that had we been content to rely on foreign notions of fair play and substantial justice, we would have found it unnecessary, in the first place, to participate in a Convention “to ensure that judicial . . . documents to be served abroad [would] be brought to the notice of the addressee in sufficient time,” 20 U. S. T., at 362.

 The head of the United States delegation to the Convention described notification au parquet as follows:
“This is a system which permits the entry of judgments in personam by default against a nonresident defendant without requiring adequate notice. There is also no real right to move to open the defáult judgment or to appeal, because the time to move to open judgment or to appeal will generally have expired before the defendant finds out about the judgment.
“Under this system of service, the process-server simply delivers a copy of the writ to a public official’s office.. The time for answer begins to run immediately. Some effort is supposed to be made through the Foreign Office and through diplomatic channels to give the défendant notice, but failure to do this -has no effect on the validity of the service.'. . .
“There are no . . . limitations and protections [comparable to due process or personal jurisdiction] under the notification au parquet system. Here jurisdiction lies merely if the plaintiff is a local national: nothing more is needed.” S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, at 11-12 (statement by Philip W. Amram). See also S. Exec. Doc. C, at 5 (letter of submittal from Secretary of State Rusk); Amram, The Revolutionary Change in Service of Process Abroad in French Civil Procedure, 2 Int’l Law. 650, 650-651 (1968) (Amram).

 3 Actes et Documents 367 (emphasis in original; footnote omitted): “However, when confronted with the strict letter of the provision, one can always ask the question of knowing whether or not, when a State permits the service or notification of a person in a foreign country to be made [au parquet], the convention is applicable.
“THE AUTHENTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE COMMISSION AS IT EMERGES FROM THE DISCUSSIONS, IS IN THE SENSE OF THE APPLICATION OF THE CONVENTION.”

 See S. Exec. Doc. C, at 8 (“[T]he convention . . . requires . . . major changes, in the direction of modern and efficient procedures, in the present practices of many other” nations) (emphasis added).

 See S. Exec. Rep No. 6, at 7 (“It is to our great advantage to obtain binding commitments from other governments that they will adhere to [the] principles” embodied in due process) (statement by Richard D. Kear-ney) (emphasis added).

 See S. Exec. Doe. C, at 1 (“[T]he convention makes important changes in the practices of many civil law countries, moving those practices in the direction of our generous system of international judicial assistance and our concept of due process in the service of documents”).

 In words reiterated by Secretary of State Rusk, the delegation observed that “[i]n its broadest aspects the convention makes no basic changes in U. S. practices.” S. Exec. Doc. C, at 20. See also id., at 8 (“The most significant aspect of the convention is the fact that it requires so little change in the present procedures in the United States”) (letter of submittal of Secretary of State Rusk). The delegation’s head likewise repeatedly observed that the Convention “leaves our common-law due-process principles unaffected and unchanged.” S. Exec. Rep. No. 6, at 11. See also id., at 9 (“By our internal law ... we already give to foreign litigants all that this convention would require us to provide”); id., at 16 (Convention “requires no changes in our law of judicial assistance”).