The requirement that individuals withdraw required minimum distribution amounts, as specified in the SECURE 2.0 Act, requires women to withdraw more than their
gender-specific life expectancy would otherwise require. This is the conclusion of Professor Richard Kaplan in a new article published in the Pittsburgh Tax Review. The paper was originally presented at an ABA-sponsored conference on revealing and addressing hidden gender bias in tax law and policy.

In updates to her report on law school hiring information, Professor Sarah Lawsky recently published data on entry-level hires as of Spring 2026. Her data show 108 new hires for the 2026 year, she further breaks down the data by schools, where hires earned degrees, whether hires had a fellowship, when hires earned their degree, and several other parameters.

When a law is inconsistent, further guidance should come from Congress, courts, and administrative agencies to create clarity. In her recent article, Professor Sarah Lawsky examines via a programming language framework an example of a tax statute that mandates inconsistent outcomes for the same set of facts and shows how that inconsistency has been addressed by the Treasury and the IRS. Her article was also the subject of a TaxProfBlog article, which you can read online.

In order to bring a drug to market, manufacturers have long been required to demonstrate safety and effectiveness in clinical trials; however, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would like to change the Food and Drug Administration’s role to make it easier access experimental medicine. In an article on the FDA considering allowing pharmacies to compound and sell seven unapproved peptides, Undark quoted Professor Jacob Sherkow who called this “a brave new world” in which some substances may “go forward without any rigorous scientific evidence base.”

Professor Peter Maggs published the 8th edition of his co-authored book “Law and Legal System of the Russian Federation” in May. Updates to the latest edition include Russia’s withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, the legal integration of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, and Zaporozhe into the Russian Federation, and sweeping legislative changes enacted to support the so-called “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.

Based on a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a federal judge found that Cook County may be liable for taking property without properly compensating homeowners for their remaining equity. The amount owed to individuals, Professor Scott Szala explained to Fox 32, may not be a huge number, perhaps $15 million per year, but in the current economic climate that might require aid from the Illinois general assembly.

Ahead of Mother’s Day, Professor Lauren Aronson published an editorial on The Opinion Pages about the ways popular ideas of motherhood have differed from her own, and many others’, lived experience. “Moms, I hope that you allow yourselves the freedom to fully embrace your feelings. To love being a mother, or to love your children but hate being a mom,” she writes. “Whatever your experience of motherhood is, know you are not alone.”

The Department of Labor recently announced it would no longer prioritize investigations and enforcement actions against employee stock ownership plans (ESOP). The Capitol Forum account of this policy change notes the regulatory concerns this announcement raises and quotes Professor Sean Anderson extensively. “Some actors in the ESOP industry will be incentivized to be less careful and more aggressive about valuation and fiduciary decision making,” he said.

Direct File, a program that allows some taxpayers to file federal income tax returns with the United States government online for free, is an extraordinary accomplishment, Professor Sarah Lawsky writes in a new article published in the Pittsburgh Tax Review. Examining the computer code underlying Direct File, Lawsky finds choices that make “the application of the law and various administrative choices more transparent even to those who are not comfortable reading computer code.”

Steve Flores has joined Michael Best’s Chicago office as an executive compensation partner in the Labor & Employment practice in the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation group.