Forum shopping is a colloquial term for the practice of litigants taking actions to have their legal case heard in the court they believe is most likely to provide a favorable judgment.
Other examples include the United Kingdom, which offers stricter defamation laws and generous divorce settlements.
The term "forum shopping" has taken on a negative connotation amongst some who view it as gamesmanship and manipulation that undermines the legitimacy of the judicial system, in order to obtain an unfair advantage.
Indeed, courts have found that the Hague Abduction Convention was designed to deter parents from engaging in international forum shopping in custody cases.
The United States has attracted foreign litigants wishing to take advantage of the more generous awards of damages and alimony, extensive discovery rules, and the contingent fee system.
[6] A defendant can resort to various procedures or theories to have a case removed from the court wherein the plaintiff originally filed it.
It is often claimed that the trials of domestic and foreign terrorists in the United States were forum shopped.
Generally, they can do so only where they can show that localized notoriety or publicity makes it unlikely that an impartial jury can be selected in the district in which charges were brought.
While the plaintiff commencing the litigation is generally considered the master of their own complaint,[9] courts may object to forum shopping for several reasons.
The fair resolution of a case hinging on technical differences from one jurisdiction to the next would offend the sense of justice, and more practically, judges may fear that having the reputation of a forum favorable to certain types of plaintiffs will delay the timely dispensation of justice in other cases by increasing their workload.
In June 2023, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill intended to discourage forum shopping by requiring that any lawsuits challenging the constitutionally of a state law be filed in one of the state's two largest counties, Cook and Sangamon.
[10] In March 2024, the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a policy against "judge shopping" for cases seeking a nationwide injunction or related relief.
[14][15][16][17] In The Atlantic Star,[18] Lord Denning MR famously stated: You may call this "forum shopping" if you please, but if the forum is England, it is a good place to shop in, both for the quality of the goods and the speed of service.In international relations (IR) theory, the term 'forum shopping' describes the situation where a state is member of two or more different international- or regional organizations which deal with the same policy area (overlapping regionalism) so the state can choose the forum (organization) for addressing a certain issue which serves its interests best.