Facilitating Distinctive and Meaningful Change Within U.S. Law Schools (Part 2): Pursuing Successful Plan Implementation Through Better Resource Management

In Part 1 of this series, one of the current authors used institutional theory, behavioral economics, and psychology to explain why U.S. law schools have had difficulty evolving faster and better. The author then used institutional entrepreneurship to propose a seven-step, faculty-led, operational change process designed to overcome institutional isomorphism and to enable each law school to formulate a distinctive, meaningful, strategic plan. In Part 2, the current article addresses the typical implementation challenges to be expected within the context of existing law school governance. The article begins by discussing the Resource Based View of the firm and the role of resource management in achieving competitive advantages. These considerations lay the foundation for the critical role of faculty engagement and law school leadership in successful strategic plan implementation. Next, within this context, the article discusses four questions whose answers may foreshadow implementation problems. Lastly, the article discusses the results of several Monte Carlo Simulations. The simulations provide insight into the likely performance problems caused by faculty misaligned with, or disengaged from, their law school’s strategic goals. The results suggest that even minimal faculty misalignment can have a significant deleterious effect on the ability of a given law school to achieve any distinctive position. All told, the article concludes that U.S. law schools can successfully implement distinctive and meaningful strategic plans within existing shared governance structures. However, success will be difficult to achieve. It requires the full engagement and leadership by both the faculty and the Dean, sustained operational support for strategic change, and the active management of law school resources

Deducting Dobbs: The Tax Treatment of Abortion-Related Travel Benefits

In 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization overturned both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey thereby giving the states carte blanche to do as they wish regarding abortion access. The decision created upheaval in the United States. However, it also provided the impetus for the creation of a new employee benefit, abortion-related travel benefits. Thirteen states had anti-abortion trigger bans that were unenforceable until Dobbs. Several other states have passed legislation that criminalizes, or significantly restricts, abortion access. Women residing in these states will now endure greater financial, health, and temporal challenges to travel out of state for abortion access. As a result, a profusion of private employers enhanced their employee benefit packages by providing abortion-related travel benefits. An assessment of the current and potential future tax treatment of such benefits is warranted. This Article provides past examples of employee benefits that were created around pivotal United States Supreme Court cases. It then covers women\u27s need to travel, and the time and expense of such travel, including the disparate impact on women of color and those in lower socio-economic positions. Then this Article focuses on the creativity and swiftness with which companies responded *2 to Dobbs to assist women who will need to travel and the federal income tax treatment of these responses. The Article explores the potential deductibility issues that could arise due to state laws criminalizing abortion and enacting aiding and abetting laws. Lastly, the Article concludes with a discussion on how the government can best proceed equitably

Employee Turnover & Partial Plan Terminations

Who would have expected that a pandemic would bring Congressional awareness of an oft-overlooked concept called Partial Plan Terminations? Congress codified a temporary (and now expired) partial termination safe harbor for qualified retirement plans in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. This was necessary because qualified plans can experience a partial termination due to layoffs resulting from an economic downturn. The pandemic created such an upheaval for many businesses that without such relief, an overwhelming number of plans would have partially terminated. However, even with businesses reopening, the economy continues to be in flux, and this can portend more employee turnover. It is important to understand the partial termination rules so that employers can recognize whether their plan has experienced one when they terminate employees. This article covers the mechanics of determining whether a plan has experienced a partial termination by defining the applicable time period, calculating turnover, and determining who the affected employees are that will become 100% vested if a plan termination has occurred. This article includes the safe harbor created by Section 209 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act from a short-term and long-term perspective. The article then highlights compliance methods and litigation concerns. Lastly, the article discusses the need for IRS guidance going forward

The AB5 Experiment - Should States Adopt California’s Worker Classification Law?

A worker\u27s classification as either independent contractor or employee drives whether a worker is entitled to minimum wage, overtime, worker\u27s compensation, unemployment compensation, anti-discrimination protection, National Labor Relations Act protections, and many other safety-net protections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment protections were extended to independent contractors, but this is not the norm and is not slated to continue post-pandemic. Classifying certain workers, particularly those who work in the app-based economy, is challenging, so states are looking for an answer - either through their own innovation or through that of other states. California\u27s answer was AB5. AB5 \u27s goals were to correct misclassification issues for app-based drivers and other workers. A plethora of workers including court reporters, freelance writers and photographers, coaches, truckers, performing artists (mimes, magicians, comedians, etc.), and musicians rebuked AB5. AB5 is well known beyond California\u27s borders as it received, and continues to receive, nationwide attention predominantly because it reclassified app-based drivers (such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc.) as employees. As Justice Brandeis said, one of the benefits of federalism is that states can act as laboratories of democracy. Experimental federalism can provide for collective learning across the states if they are all experimenting, but often states look to one another for innovative solutions so that they can free-ride instead of experiment. Some states that are looking for an improved worker classification law seek to learn from, and potentially free-ride on, California\u27s AB5 experiment. In considering whether to adopt AB5 or a similar statute, states should consider, at a minimum, three factors: relevancy of the law to their state, ease in obtaining information about the law, and the costs to adopt, implement, and enforce the law. This Article assists policymakers and interest groups by providing a detailed look at the AB5 experiment. It applies the aforementioned three factors and determines that California\u27s law, while well-intentioned is likely not valuable for, or adoptable by, other states or the federal government partly because it contains 109 exemptions. Ultimately, this Article concludes that to maximize the benefits of experimental federalism, a group of states, both homogenous and heterogenous to California, should experiment with more novel approaches to reach an optimal solution to worker (mis)classification. Adopting California\u27s worker classification law will result in states following a sub-optimal law and in premature convergence delaying states from reaching a better solution. Workers need protections, but California\u27s worker classification law does not sufficiently satisfy this need. Further experimentation is required

On-Orbit Results From the NASA Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity With a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) Mission

The NASA TROPICS Earth Venture (EVI-3) CubeSat constellation mission will provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate better than 60 minutes for the baseline mission) over the tropics that can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. The TROPICS constellation mission comprises four 3UCubeSats (5.4 kg each) in two low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat contains a Blue Canyon Technologies bus and a high-performance radiometer payload to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel at 205 GHz that is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles. TROPICS spatial resolution and measurement sensitivity is comparable with current state-of-the-art observing platforms. Two dedicated launches (two spacecraft per launch) for the TROPICS constellation mission on Rocket Lab Electron vehicles occurred in 2023 (May 8 and May 26) to place the spacecraft in 32.75-degree inclined orbits at 550 km altitude. Data will be downlinked to the ground via the KSAT-Lite ground network. NASA\u27s Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program Office approved the separate TROPICS Pathfinder mission, which launched on June 30, 2021, in advance of the TROPICS constellation mission as a technology demonstration and risk reduction effort. The TROPICS Pathfinder mission has provided an opportunity to checkout and optimize all mission elements prior to the primary constellation mission and is still operating nominally

Comment Re: Non-Compete Clause Rulemaking, Matter No. P201200

Within signed law professors and law students submitted this letter to the Federal Trade Commission, writing in their individual capacities, not as agents of their affiliated institutions, in support of the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rule to ban most non-compete clauses (the “Proposal”) as an unfair method of competition. This letter offers comments in response to areas where the FTC has requested public comment. To make our views clear, this letter contains the following sections: I. Summary of the Proposal; II. The Commission Should Consider Expanding Its Definition of Non-Compete Clauses to Prevent Employers from Requiring Workers to Quit Before Seeking Alternative Employment; III. Non-Compete Clauses Are Unfair Methods of Competition; IV. Non-Compete Clauses Negatively Impact Workers and Their Families; V. The Proposed Rule Protects Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs; and VI. The Commission Should Consider a Factor Test for Its Unfairness Analysis for Senior Executive

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin