The Rise of the Common Law of Federal Pleading: Iqbal, Twombly, and the Application of Judicial Experience

SINCE 1938, Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Federal Rules or Rules) has set the standard for how much a plaintiff must allege at the outset of a lawsuit in order to avoid dismissal for failure to state a claim. Rule 8 requires that a plaintiff must include in the complaint a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief. Federal courts developed a well-settled set of principles to apply when deciding whether to dismiss a claim. Among these principles are the following: (1) the plaintiffs factual allegations are accepted as true;(2) the court must construe the complaint liberally (in favor of the plaintiff) and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff;(3) the court may not consider matters or information beyond what is stated on the face of the complaint, judicially noticed facts, and any attachments to the complaint;(4) the complaint must provide notice to the defendant of the plaintiffs claims and the grounds on which they rest;and (5) the court should not dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that it is impossible for the plaintiff to prove some set of facts in support of his or her claim which would entitle him or her to relief. These principles can be summarized as: the court must accept the vision of the world described in the plaintiffs complaint and it must view the events that transpired in that world as the plaintiff would view them. This concept is consistent with the adversarial litigation process we have adopted in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Villanova Law Review is the property of Villanova University School of Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder\u27s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.

The Rise of the Common Law of Federal Pleading: Iqbal, Twombly, and the Application of Judicial Experience

SINCE 1938, Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Federal Rules or Rules) has set the standard for how much a plaintiff must allege at the outset of a lawsuit in order to avoid dismissal for failure to state a claim. Rule 8 requires that a plaintiff must include in the complaint a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief. Federal courts developed a well-settled set of principles to apply when deciding whether to dismiss a claim. Among these principles are the following: (1) the plaintiffs factual allegations are accepted as true;(2) the court must construe the complaint liberally (in favor of the plaintiff) and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff;(3) the court may not consider matters or information beyond what is stated on the face of the complaint, judicially noticed facts, and any attachments to the complaint;(4) the complaint must provide notice to the defendant of the plaintiffs claims and the grounds on which they rest;and (5) the court should not dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that it is impossible for the plaintiff to prove some set of facts in support of his or her claim which would entitle him or her to relief. These principles can be summarized as: the court must accept the vision of the world described in the plaintiffs complaint and it must view the events that transpired in that world as the plaintiff would view them. This concept is consistent with the adversarial litigation process we have adopted in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Villanova Law Review is the property of Villanova University School of Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder\u27s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.

A Civil Method of Law Enforcement on the Reservation: In Rem Forfeiture and Indian Law

Two of the greatest sustainable resources currently available to American Indian tribes in their struggle to gain economic independence are tourism and gambling. Both resources require tribes to admit large numbers of non-Indians onto their reservations. This article proposes and assesses in rem forfeiture as a viable method of law enforcement for American Indian tribes. It considers the scope and limits of tribal sovereignty and the civil/criminal jurisdictional dichotomy established by Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe and Montana v. United States. The article concludes that enacting and enforcing in rem forfeiture provisions would broaden the limited array of law enforcement tools available to tribes to deal with Non-Indians who visit their reservations

CPT symmetry and antimatter gravity in general relativity

The gravitational behavior of antimatter is still unknown. While we may be confident that antimatter is self-attractive, the interaction between matter and antimatter might be either attractive or repulsive. We investigate this issue on theoretical grounds. Starting from the CPT invariance of physical laws, we transform matter into antimatter in the equations of both electrodynamics and gravitation. In the former case, the result is the well-known change of sign of the electric charge. In the latter, we find that the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter is a mutual repulsion, i.e. antigravity appears as a prediction of general relativity when CPT is applied. This result supports cosmological models attempting to explain the Universe accelerated expansion in terms of a matter-antimatter repulsive interaction.Comment: 6 pages, to be published in EPL (http://epljournal.edpsciences.org/

Children with complex support needs in healthcare settings for prolonged periods: their numbers, characteristics and experiences

This report details the findings of research conducted in England and Scotland to identify how many children with complex support needs are spending longer than one month in healthcare settings in Scotland and England, how and why they are in hospital, why they have not been discharged home or to appropriate alternative community-based facilities, and how well the hospital or healthcare setting is meeting their emotional, social and educational needs. It finds that many of these children could and should be discharged but are not, for a variety of reasons: primarily the lack of appropriate resources in the community and poor discharge planning processes, coupled with the inability of their families to manage their care and supervision without intensive support. Hospitals and healthcare settings in many cases are not meeting their needs and these children are being denied the protection offered by UK legislation governing children's rights and welfare

An Upper Limit on the Reflected Light from the Planet Orbiting the Star tau Bootis

The planet orbiting tau Boo at a separation of 0.046 AU could produce a reflected light flux as bright as 1e-4 relative to that of the star. A spectrum of the system will contain a reflected light component which varies in amplitude and Doppler-shift as the planet orbits the star. Assuming the secondary spectrum is primarily the reflected stellar spectrum, we can limit the relative reflected light flux to be less than 5e-5. This implies an upper limit of 0.3 for the planetary geometric albedo near 480 nm, assuming a planetary radius of 1.2 R_Jup. This albedo is significantly less than that of any of the giant planets of the solar system, and is not consistent with certain published theoretical predictions.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, accepted by ApJ Letter