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Pleading Civil Rights Claims In The Post-Conley Era, A. Benjamin Spencer
Pleading Civil Rights Claims In The Post-Conley Era, A. Benjamin Spencer
Faculty Publications
Much has been made of the Supreme Court's recent pronouncements on federal civil pleading standards during the latter half of the 2006-2007 Term. Specifically, what will be the fallout from the Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, a case that abrogated Conley v. Gibson's famous "no set of facts" formulation and supplanted it with a new plausibility pleading standard? This Article attempts to examine and distill the impact of Twombly on the pleading standards that lower federal courts are applying when scrutinizing civil rights claims. Two main approaches emerge: that of courts choosing to continue to apply a …
Plausibility Pleading, A. Benjamin Spencer
Plausibility Pleading, A. Benjamin Spencer
Faculty Publications
Last Term, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically reinterpreted Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) (2), which requires a "short and plain" statement of a plaintiffs claim. The Court was unabashed about this change of course: it explicitly abrogated a core element of its 1957 decision in Conley v. Gibson, which until recently was the bedrock case undergirding the idea that ours is a system of notice pleading in which detailed facts need not be pleaded. Departing from this principle, the Court in Twombly required the pleading of facts that demonstrate the plausibility of the …
Complex Litigation Lecture: The Adversary System And Modern Class Action Practice, Roger H. Trangsrud
Complex Litigation Lecture: The Adversary System And Modern Class Action Practice, Roger H. Trangsrud
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In modern class action practice, the class action device can enormously expand the availability of justice but can also cause substantial injustice to defendants and absent class members when improperly used. The latter is often the case because Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has come to be interpreted by the federal courts in ways that mask the proper criteria that should be used in deciding whether to certify a class action. Thus, Rule 23 needs a complete overhaul. First, Rule 23 should be amended to allow appeals as of right, not discretion, from orders granting or …