Req: Same as Fall 2015
Req: Bridges and Schiess, Writing for Litigation, 2011, Wolters Kluwer #9781454802730

For Wednesday, January 20th - read pages 431-441, regarding pleadings and drafting of complaints. Pay particular attention to FRCP 8(a)(2) and how the Supreme Court construes the language of FRCP 8(a)(2) in the case Swierkiewicz v. Sorema (pages 436-441) to require very little factual detail for a complaint to be sufficient

For Friday, January 22nd - read (1) pages 441-478, from the Spencer text; and (2) pages 29-41 and 160-163, from the book entitled Writing for Litigation, by Kamela Bridges and Wayne Schiess. In this assignment from the Spencer text, the Supreme Court's interpretation of 8(a)(2) changes in two cases - Twombly and 1qbal--which are sometimes referred to jointly and facetiously as "Twlqbal". In these cases, the Court ratchets up the factual detail that must be in a complaint for the complaint to be sufficient, by changing its interpretation of FRCP 8(a)(2). See if you can identify the changes made to the interpretation of FRCP 8(a)(2) in Twombly and again in Iqbal. Also, look for the reasons why the Court changed its interpretation of FRCP 8(a)(2) to require more factual information in the complaint. The reading from Writing for Litigation discusses how to draft a complaint.