Case Citator › Ker v. Illinois

Ker v. Illinois

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
119 U.S. 436
Decided
Confirmed treatments
3
Flagged citations read
71 of 71
Citing cases (total)
71
Treatment dates
1974–1996
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Ker v. Illinois has been limited. All 71 flagged citations have been read; the three confirmed treatments are listed below.
More on how this was screened

The Second Circuit confined the Ker-Frisbie rule where deliberate government misconduct violated a defendant’s constitutional rights; the other two courts addressed distinct settings.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

71 later cases cite Ker v. Illinois; 71 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Ker v. Illinois?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Second Circuit held that Ker-Frisbie could not control where government agents deliberately and unreasonably violated a defendant’s rights to bring him before a federal court, and remanded for possible relief on the abduction allegations.

    United States v. Francisco Toscanino · United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit · filed

    Faced with a conflict between the two concepts of due process, the one being the restricted version found in Ker-Frisbie and the other the expanded and enlightened interpretation expressed in more recent decisions of the Supreme Court, we are persuaded that to the extent that the two are in conflict, the Ker-Frisbie version must yield.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Texas Court of Appeals confined Ker and related seizure cases to isolated, spontaneous illegal seizures without conscience-shocking abuse and declined to treat them as prospective sanction for a regular program of foreign kidnappings.

    Day v. State · Texas Court of Appeals, Eighth District, El Paso · filed

    The case law proffered by the State and relied upon by this Court in previously upholding these denials of habeas corpus relief stand only for the proposition that isolated, spontaneous illegal seizures of the person, absent abusive treatment shocking to the conscience, will not support a challenge to the Court’s personal jurisdiction over the fugitive, Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 72 S.Ct. 509, 96 L.Ed. 541 (1952); Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436, 7 S.Ct. 225, 30 L.Ed. 421 (1886); United States v. Toscanino, 500 F.2d 267 (2nd Cir.1974). We do not construe these cases and others cited in Day and Quintero as affirmative, prospective sanctions for the F.B.I. or any other state or federal law enforcement agency, either directly or through surrogates, to establish a regular policy and practice of engaging in such activity of illegally seizing United States citizens in a foreign country.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The district court declined to extend the Ker-Frisbie rule for individual criminal defendants to alien corporations, holding that service on a corporate agent in the United States does not establish jurisdiction without sufficient national contacts.

    United States v. Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd. · United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts · filed

    The Supreme Court explained in Frisbie: The Court has never departed from the rule announced in Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 [7 S.Ct. 225, 30 L.Ed. 421] [1886] that the power of a court to try a person for crime is not impaired by the fact that he had been brought within the court’s jurisdiction by reason of a ‘forcible abduction.’...And so, the government contends, service on an agent within the territory of the United States establishes the presence of an alien corporation. The principal problem with the government’s analogy lies with the concept of corporate presence....For these reasons, this court holds that the mere service of process on an agent or officer of an alien corporation within the United States does not without more establish the jurisdiction of a federal court over an alien corporation. Rather, as this court has previously decided in the context of a civil matter, service of such process is only effective to create in personam jurisdiction where a defendant has sufficient contacts with the United States.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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