Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2022
Researchers often study the impact of legal change by investigating judges’ decisions and ignoring litigants. Many scholars believe the Supreme Court’s decisions in Twombly and Iqbal increased how specific factual allegations must be to avoid dismissal, but studies generally fail to find an effect. Using text analysis, I find evidence that litigants and their lawyers changed the information they provided after the decisions in certain types of cases. These results call into question prior studies and illustrate the need to consider the behavior of litigants. They also help shed light on issues of access to courts and separation of powers.
The judges who granted my requests for exemptions from Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) fees and to release the data, and the judges and attorneys who allowed me to interview them, have my deepest-felt gratitude. I am also grateful to Scott Hendrickson, William Hubbard, Michael Nelson, Keith Schnakenberg, Amy L. Steigerwalt, Joe Cecil, and participants in the Fall 2012 Northwestern Law School Political Economy Seminar, 2012 Midwest Law and Economics Association annual meeting, 2013 American Political Science Association annual meeting, 2014 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting, 2015 Southern Political Science Association annual meeting, and 2018 Civil Justice Research Initiative Meeting for helpful comments regarding this project. I also thank my research assistants, especially Raymond Flores, Shengron Liu, and Jeffrey Zhao, for all their hard work in collecting, coding, and processing data and technical assistance. This project would not have been possible without support from the Center for Empirical Research in the Law.