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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Stipulating The Law, Gary Lawson
Stipulating The Law, Gary Lawson
Michigan Law Review
In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the Supreme Court decided important questions of structural constitutionalism on the assumption, shared by all of the parties, that members of the Securities and Exchange Commission are not removable at will by the president. Four Justices strongly challenged the majority's willingness to accept what amounts to a stipulation by the parties to a controlling issue of law. As a general matter the American legal system does not allow parties to stipulate to legal conclusions, though it welcomes and encourages stipulations to matters of fact. I argue that one ought to …
New Pleading, New Discovery, Scott Dodson
New Pleading, New Discovery, Scott Dodson
Michigan Law Review
Pleading in federal court has a new narrative. The old narrative was one of notice, with the goal of broad access to the civil justice system. New Pleading, after the landmark Supreme Court cases of Twombly and Iqbal, is focused on factual sufficiency, with the purpose of screening out meritless cases that otherwise might impose discovery costs on defendants. The problem with New Pleading is that factual insufficiency often is a poor proxy for meritlessness. Some plaintifs lack sufficient factual knowledge of the elements of their claims not because the claims lack merit but because the information they need is …