Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last year I introduced the Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009, H.R. 1504. As I explained in my accompanying floor statement, my objective was to restore the pleading standard that had governed federal civil practice if not since the Federal Rules of Procedure originally took effect in 1938, then at very least since the Supreme Court decided Conley v. Gibson in 1957. Several months earlier the Supreme Court had issued the second of two controversial decisions--Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 2007, and Iqbal v. Ashcroft, 2009--in which it had replaced that standard with a heightened pleading standard that, not least among its several flaws, was plainly inconsistent with the original meaning of the Federal Rules. My concern was not only that the Court had closed the courthouse doors to plaintiffs with meritorious claims and limited the private enforcement of public law, but also that, in yet another of its recent incursions on Congress's lawmaking powers, it had end-run the process for amending the Rules established by the Rules Enabling Act of 1934. That process includes, as its last step, Congressional approval of any amendment. While there was widespread agreement among the country's leading academic proceduralists on the need for legislation overruling the Court's decisions, there was much less agreement among them as to what, exactly, the legislation should say. I chose in S. 1504 to incorporate the pleading standard set forth in Conley.…”