Why Twombly is Good Law (But Poorly Drafted) and Iqbal Will Be Overturned

In the attempt to decipher what is required to plead a claim for relief in federal court after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, commentators have usually combined these two cases as being part of the same "revolution" in pleading. The Iqbal case is often credited for clearing up lingering questions regarding the scope of the "plausibility" analysis introduced in Twombly. Apart from this issue, however, Twombly and Iqbal have usually been discussed as a cohesive pair. They have been jointly criticized. Occasionally, they have been jointly praised.

The tendency to view Twombly and Iqbal as a collective unit has, unfortunately, interfered with efforts to understand pleading doctrine. The cases have dissimilar analytical foundations. In short, the Twombly decision can be justified as merely an application of preexisting principles regarding pleading; the Iqbal case, however, was wrongly decided and is destined to be overruled. To jointly criticize both opinions is to throw the baby (Twombly) out with the bathwater (Iqbal); to jointly praise both opinions, to continue the analogy, is to miss how dirty the bath water is in which the baby is sitting. Until Twombly and Iqbal are decoupled and considered as separate entities, pleading jurisprudence will continue in a state of disarray.