Law Commons^™

Contracting Around Twombly, Alon Klement, Daphna Kapeliuk

Alon Klement

The Supreme Court's recent decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have generated a heated debate over which is the most just and efficient transsubstantive pleading standard. Unlike the vast scholarship that followed these decisions, we do not take sides in this debate. Instead, we focus on a subset of cases in which litigants have prior contractual relationships. We argue that if contracting parties are allowed to contract around the Twombly pleading standard, they will be able to overcome problems of inadequate screening and to realize both pre-dispute and post-dispute opportunities that would prove unfeasible otherwise. …