Figures
Each figure is designed to clarify a single relationship in the manuscript.
Caption: Traditional doctrine inferred purpose from physical contacts because geography usually reflected human operational choice.
Takeaway: Physical contact once served as a strong proxy for seller-directed operational choice.
Key Question: What fact did geography historically summarize?
Caption: The warehouse remains visible, but the operational decision-maker changes.
Takeaway: Platform optimization can sit between seller strategy and state contact.
Key Question: Who controlled the operational path?
Caption: Constitutional attribution becomes more difficult when strategic participation and operational execution are divided between different actors.
Takeaway: The seller and platform may make different kinds of legally relevant decisions.
Key Question: Should strategy and execution be attributed the same way?
Caption: The seller establishes the commercial objective by participating in FBA, while Amazon’s fulfillment architecture controls warehouse placement, inventory transfers, fulfillment routing, shipment execution, and, during commingling, the relationship between physical units and inventory ledger entries.
Takeaway: FBA makes the attribution question concrete.
Key Question: Where does seller choice end and platform execution begin?
Caption: Commingling separates physical fulfillment from the seller’s original physical unit, complicating the inference that physical location necessarily reflects seller conduct.
Takeaway: Ledger attribution and physical-unit movement may diverge.
Key Question: Does the contact follow the unit, the ledger, or the platform decision?
Caption: The legally visible contact may appear at the end of a computational decision chain.
Takeaway: The legal question becomes harder when the operational path is hidden.
Key Question: Who created the constitutionally relevant contact?
Caption: Traditional commerce often linked warehouse choice and state contact through the merchant’s operational decision; algorithmic commerce can insert platform-controlled optimization, transfer, commingling, and routing between seller participation and the legally visible contact.
Takeaway: This is the project’s signature diagram.
Key Question: How should constitutional attribution respond when the decision chain changes?