Pleading Civil Rights Claims Post-Conley

The Federal Civil Practice Bulletin recently posted an abstract from Professor A. Benjamin Spencer’s article, “Pleading Civil Rights Claims in the Post-Conley Era.”  Spencer (Washington & Lee) attempts to examine and distill the impact of Twombly on pleading standards the lower federal courts apply when scrutinizing civil rights claims. Twombly abrogated Conley v. Gibson’s “no set of facts” formulation and supplanted it with a new plausibility pleading standard. An abstract and full text version of this article can be accessed via SSRN by clicking here. –Counseller/md