While effusive, "conclusory" is still quite elusive: The story of a word, Iqbal, and a perplexing lexical inquiry of Supreme importance

Abstract

This article is a story about the word "conclusory." The word is effusive in legal discourse, yet it has been largely elusive to the editors and drafters of dictionaries. Few dictionaries include the word "conclusory, " and those that do have only recently adopted it. The small number of available dictionary definitions that do exist seem to fail to capture the word's usage in the legal world. This article explores this definitional perplexity. As the word "conclusory" has taken center stage in the procedural plays of civil litigation with the help of the 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the need to attach coherent meaning to the word increasingly prevails upon the legal profession. This article presents original research and data on the historical use of the word and its lexicographical coverage. It concludes that the inclusion of "conclusory" and its proper definition are long overdue and should be demanded of dictionaries, both legal and general. Lawyers need the word and are using it despite suboptimal inclusion or support for its use in reference books. As lawyers will.