Abstract
Algorithmic Nexus examines a constitutional attribution problem created by modern algorithmic commerce. For much of American constitutional history, physical presence generally reflected purposeful human operational conduct. A warehouse, office, delivery route, inventory location, or sales force usually pointed back to a merchant, corporation, agent, or contractor that selected or controlled the relevant physical contact. Constitutional doctrine could therefore use physical presence as a practical proxy for purposeful conduct without separately isolating ownership, operational control, decision-making, and legal attribution.
Modern fulfillment systems may separate those facts. A seller may own inventory, choose a marketplace, supply products, and benefit from national distribution, while a platform-controlled fulfillment architecture determines warehouse placement, transfer, commingling, routing, shipment execution, and the relationship between physical units and inventory ledger entries. The legally visible contact with a state may appear only after a sequence of operational decisions made inside a distributed software system. The question is no longer simply where inventory was located. The question is who decided it would be there.
This manuscript calls that problem Algorithmic Nexus. The term does not announce a new constitutional rule and does not propose that software is a legal actor. It names an analytical framework for organizing facts before doctrine is applied. The framework, described as the Attribution Chain, separates ownership, control, decision, and constitutional attribution. It asks courts and scholars to identify the legally relevant contact, the operational decision that created it, the institution that controlled that decision, and the role of consent, benefit, foreseeability, agency, bailment, administrability, and statutory assignment before applying due process and Commerce Clause doctrine.
Amazon FBA is used as a case study rather than as the endpoint of the theory. The Washington Orthotic Shop record, Inventory Event Detail reports, TaxJar correspondence, commingling materials, Amazon technical materials, patents, shareholder letters, the South Carolina Amazon Services decision, and scholarly correspondence provide a documentary record through which the attribution problem becomes visible. The manuscript presents the Washington case respectfully and does not argue that it was wrongly decided. It instead asks whether modern fulfillment architecture exposes unresolved constitutional questions that older physical-presence assumptions did not require courts to isolate.
The manuscript also presents the strongest competing model. Under the traditional physical-presence view, ownership of property located within a state may provide a historically grounded and administrable jurisdictional basis for tax obligations. Under the decision-attribution view, modern commerce may require closer attention to who created the operational contact when ownership and control diverge. The project does not attempt to prove which model should prevail. It seeks to clarify why the interaction between algorithmic operational control and constitutional attribution deserves continued scholarly examination.