The IAM* case presents an extremely technical Title IV issue (revolving around the calculation of withdrawal liability) with which I will not bore you. My point here is to highlight a nugget in the case relating to the time-bending concept of "as of".
Time travel, together with its various potential paradoxes, has long been a fascinating subject of any number of books, movies and television shows. While different stories have wildly disparate perspectives and slants on how time and time travel work, with deep fundamental differences, the basic notion of hopping to the past and the future is a constant.
The are virtually endless (no pun intended) instances of time travel in pop culture. Notable examples include Star Trek (the great return-of-Tasha-Yar episode (discussed here) and the City on the Edge of Forever being two of many episodes), The Twilight Zone (e.g., Walking Distance (a pathos-laden story made even more poignant by Gig Young's real-world suffering) and A Matter of Minutes (which shows how even later iterations of the series can sometimes be remarkably clever) (discussed here), The Terminator, 12 Monkeys, Back to the Future, 2001: A Space Odyssey (or, as Mad called it, A Space Idiocy), The Time Machine, Inception (and Tenet),** the Avengers, the Avengers, The Flash, the Avengers and the Avengers (and, of course, the Avengers).*** And let us not forget the incredibly clever adventure game, Day of the Tentacle (which was a Maniac Mansion sequel).
Now, I don't mean to pretend that ERISA lawyers have the market cornered on temporal distortions. Corporate lawyers frequently utter in mantra-like fashion the magic "as of" words in resolutions and other documents.****
But ERISA lawyers have no shortage of familiarity with the "as of" mechanic. Plan amendments are often retroactively effective, in a way that (hopefully) conforms to actual practice. (And watch the avenues of exploration when someone forgets to have needed amendments signed within the remedial amendment period.) The option-backdating scandal***** was one of the earlier examples of the explosion of an element of the executive-compensation onto the front pages of the mainstream press. Employment agreements are almost always signed with an "as of" aspect to the specified arrangements where the agreements are signed after the term has begun.
Anyway, for those who spend time thinking about just what "as of" legally means, the Supreme Court in the IAM case has given us****** a paragraph . . . ahem . . . for the ages:
****
Dictionaries define “as of ” to mean “at the date mentioned.” Oxford American Dictionary 34 (1980); see also Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 129 (1976) (“at or on (a specific time or date)”). In context, the term is understood “to assign an event to one time and the recognition of it to another.” W. Follett, Modern American Usage 41 (rev. ed. 1998).
****
Ooh - potentially good citable words to have in an opinion of the Court. Maybe they'll come in handy one day. In the future. Or in the past.
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* Not to be confused with STP's "I am" refrain.
** Memento sorta feels like a time-travel yarn, but, truth be told, it isn't.
*** I'd even include The Shining, with Philip Stone's Delbert (Charles?) Grady's protestation to Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance: "I’m sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I’ve always been here."
**** Gotta love the ubiquitous execution "as of the date [[or:] day and year] first above written".
***** Here's a question: is it really backdating, where "as of" language is used, in that the use of "as of" arguably admits to, or at least contemplates, that the date in the document is not really the date of the document?
****** Dare I say, ab initio?!?
