Codifying Plausibility Discovery: A Proposal to Amend Rule 12

In 2007 and 2009, the Supreme Court upended the long-understood notice pleading framework, replacing it with the plausibility standard introduced in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal‍. I proceed from the assumptions that the pre-Twombly/Iqbal pleading standard was, roughly speaking, the one announced in Conley v. Gibson, and that courts now generally apply the framework set…