Patricia Hatamyar Moore *
Judges, lawyers, academics, legislators, and law students have collectively spent thousands of hours over the last two years parsing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, debating whether it mandated a radical change in federal pleading standards, and predicting its future influence on rulings on motions to dismiss federal complaints under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Some have also attempted to quantitatively measure whether federal district court judges were less likely to grant 12(b)(6) motions under the old “no set of facts” standard set forth in dictum in Conley v. Gibson than under the new “plausibility” standard introduced in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and amplified in Iqbal.
* Associate Professor of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law. J.D., 1983, University of Chicago Law School; B.A., 1980, Northwestern University. A research grant from St. Thomas University School of Law supported work on this article.