What is tenure?

As reported here, the Sixth Circuit recently held that a tenured professor at Thomas Cooley Law Schooldid not have permanent employment or a right to continuous employment, where the contract was only for a one-year term and did not provide for, or define, tenure. The court also read the ABA standards, which were incorporated into the contract, as exemplary and hortatory, and not as formal contractual definitions of tenure as lifetime employment in this contract. The court also held that a faculty review process held three years after the termination decision was sufficient process under the contract.

I always have considered myself to be on a one-year contract that is automatically renewable, except for cause and with certain contractual process rights, which seems to be what the Sixth Circuit is saying here. Do others define tenure differently?  Is this decision unique to the contract at issue and to Michigan law? Is this case really not about tenure per se (despite the tenor of the NLJ report) but about a conclusion as to what cause and process is sufficient for a school to fire a tenured professor?

Update: Jeff Hisrch comments at Workplace Prof Blog, calling the court's disregard for the ordinary meaning of tenure "troublesome" as a matter of ordinary contract law, doubting that anyone at Cooley believed or inteended that faculty could be fired at will at the end of an academic year. Jeff believes this is partly a product of the contracts at issue and most contracts specifically define tenure (or will going forward). One of my initial thoughts, confirmed by Jeff's post, is that under the Sixth Circuit's view, a tenured professor has less job security year-to-year than a professor on a long-term contract.