Student Note
Introduction Frank Rosenthal is credited as the man responsible for bringing sportsbooks to Vegas.[1] Growing up in a Jewish family on the West Side of Chicago, he started spending time at the local horse tracks at the age of thirteen.[2] He learned the intricacies of the racing form, the program given to handicappers with all the pertinent information for the would-be horse bettor: past performances, post positions, jockeys, owners, and trainers.[3] This initiated a love of gambling that fully bloomed…
by Ryan Grandeau
Student Note
Introduction Staci Doolin, a beneficiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBS), sought care from a primary health care[1] physician.[2] To confirm that the provider was in-network, Ms. Doolin both consulted the plan[3] website and spoke on the phone with BCBS customer service.[4] After BCBS confirmed that the primary care physician was in-network, Ms. Doolin visited the physician she found on the directory, but BCBS later denied coverage of her $500 visit.[5] Ms. Doolin contested the denial for coverage…
by Jaclyn Kleban
Student Note
Introduction In 2009, Google and Apple garnered many accolades as two of the preeminent companies in the world, both in terms of sales and market value.[1] Forbes ranked them in the top 200 global companies.[2] Although their rankings in 2009 pale in comparison to their recent rankings,[3] the meteoric rise of both companies seemed predictable when taking a glance at their earnings per share growth percentage and revenue growth percentage in the three years prior to 2009.[4] The increase in…
by Shafkat Rakib
Article
For four decades, there was a near-universal consensus that consumer welfare was the sole and appropriate purpose of antitrust law. That consensus is breaking apart. For the first time in two generations, a growing group of scholars and policymakers is challenging that orthodoxy. They reject the consumer welfare consensus, and argue that antimonopoly policy should and can have much broader social goals, and serve democratic ends, not merely efficiency ones. This group is unified by its shared protest, but lacks…
by Zephyr Teachout
Article
According to the conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal discarded notice pleading in favor of plausibility pleading. This Article—part of a symposium commemorating the Iqbal decision’s tenth anniversary—highlights decisions during those ten years that have continued to endorse notice pleading despite Iqbal. It also argues that those decisions reflect the best way to read the Iqbal decision. Although Iqbal is a troubling decision in many respects, it can be implemented consistently with the notice-pleading framework…
by Adam N. Steinman
Article
“There is certainly no longer reason to force the pleadings to take the place of proof, and to require other ideas than simple concise statements, free from the requirement of technical detail.” —Charles E. Clark, 1937[1] Introduction In 2009, the Supreme Court decided Ashcroft v. Iqbal,[2] in which it pronounced—among other things[3]—that the second sentence of Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure—which permits allegations of malice, intent, knowledge, and other conditions of the mind to be…
by A. Benjamin Spencer
Article
In the wake of Twombly and Iqbal, courts and commentators have questioned whether notice pleading died with those cases. But what exactly was notice pleading? In this Essay, I argue that the question of whether the Court had “really” abandoned notice pleading in Twombly and Iqbal was a distraction from the fact that a full-bodied doctrine of notice pleading had never really existed in the first place. It had little separate existence from general theories of openness and liberalism, yet…
by Robin J. Effron
Article
Introduction For many decades, it was a given that, under certain circumstances, supervisory defendants in § 1983[1] or Bivens[2] actions could be held liable when their subordinates violated the Constitution. The various theories under which supervisors could be held accountable ultimately were given the generic term “supervisory liability.”[3] When the Supreme Court announced its decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal,[4] many predicted a seismic shift in how claims of supervisory liability would be adjudicated—after all, the majority opinion termed supervisory liability a…
by Alexander A. Reinert
Article
Introduction On what I imagine was a blustery fall day in Washington D.C. in 2009, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Practice and Procedure (Committee) was in a rather foul mood. That previous spring, the Committee finished two major rule projects, and it was hard at work on an upcoming conference of civil litigation experts to be held at Duke Law School.[1] The summer of 2009 was to be a respite—a calm between the storms really. Instead, as…
by Brooke Coleman
Article
In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, building on Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to treat a complaint’s conclusions differently from allegations of fact. Facts, but not conclusions, are assumed true for purposes of a motion to dismiss. The Court did little to help judges or lawyers understand this elusive distinction, and, indeed, obscured the distinction with its language. The Court said it was distinguishing “legal conclusions” from factual allegations. The application in Twombly and Iqbal,…
by Howard M. Erichson
