Law Commons^™

Can Speech Act Theory Save Notice Pleading?, Susan E. Provenzano

Indiana Law Journal

Countless scholars have debated—and lower courts have attempted to apply—the plausibility pleading regime that the Supreme Court introduced in Twombly and Iqbal. Iqbal took Twombly’s requirement that a complaint plead plausibly and turned it into a two-step test. Under that test, the life or death of a lawsuit rests on the distinction between “well-pleaded” and “conclusory” allegations. Only the former are assumed true on a motion to dismiss. Seven decades of pleading precedent had taken a sensible, if unstable, approach to the truth assumption, making a single cut between factual contentions (assumed true) and legal conclusions (ignored). But Iqbal redrew …

Enforcing Outbound Forum Selection Clauses In State Court, John Coyle, Katherine Robinson

Indiana Law Journal

Forum selection clauses are a staple of modern business law. Parties agree, ex ante, on where they can sue one another and then rely on the courts to enforce these agreements. Although the number of contracts containing forum selection clauses has skyrocketed in recent years, there is a dearth of empirical information about enforcement practice at the state level. Are there any states that refuse to enforce them? How frequently are they enforced? Under what circumstances, if any, will these clauses be deemed unenforceable? The existing literature provides few answers to these questions.

This Article aims to fill that gap. …

An Appellate Solution To Nationwide Injunctions, Sam Heavenrich

Indiana Law Journal

District courts have issued an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions during the Obama and Trump administrations, provoking criticism from the Supreme Court. This Article proposes a change to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that addresses the Justices’ concerns without taking the drastic step of eliminating nationwide injunctions entirely. Specifically, this Article recommends amending Rule 65 to allow only the appellate courts to issue injunctive relief that extends beyond the plaintiffs in cases challenging a federal law or policy. In addition to the proposed Rule change, this Article offers a categorization framework for existing proposals addressing nationwide injunctions, classifying them …