Legal Commentary

At the beginning of the upcoming school-year, I become a bit of a strange creature within our profession (if I wasn't already) -- a full professor without tenure.  The reason is simple enough to explain -- American University has a rigid and inflexible (six) years-of-academic-service requirement before one becomes eligible for tenure, but the only time requirement for promotion to full professor is (two) years of service at the associate professor level.  Because I was already an associate professor when I moved laterally to American two years ago (and wasn't demoted), I satisfied the latter requirement earlier than is typical for folks who start at AU, who usually don't get promoted to associate professor until after their fourth year of teaching.

I raise this, though, because it leads me to wonder about the professional etiquette of being a full professor without tenure. For instance, do I need to note on my cv (and elsewhere) that I don't yet have tenure, since most will naturally assume, based upon the title, that I do?  Does that, in turn, send perhaps the opposite message -- that I was denied tenure, and am now effectively "of counsel" at my law school? (A fate which may yet await me...)

More generally, isn't it usually the other way around -- that folks get tenure based upon their professional accomplishments before they are promoted to full professor?  That's certainly true in other academic disciplines, isn't it?  If so, does that suggest that tenure based on a rigid years-of-service requirement causes more problems than it solves?

I'm torn on the tenure question, because I totally get the egalitarianism of not allowing folks to come up for tenure early, since that would create very strange and informal pressures on both the rank and tenure committee and on the junior deciding whether or not to go up early.  But it seems equally strange to have promotions and tenure so thoroughly unrelated to each other.  What's the magic bullet, here?