On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. University of North Carolina (collectively “SFFA”) that Harvard and the University of North Carolina (“UNC”) violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by impermissibly considering race when making undergraduate admissions decisions ...
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has published an update to its guidance on misleading green claims that demonstrates its collaboration with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and their joint commitment to protect consumers from 'greenwashing'. What are green claims? We discussed green claims and the ASA’s and CMA’s guidance in our previous article “Are your green claims compliant?” ...
The key issue before the formal body of advisers to the UK sovereign was whether the trustee of a settlement “exercised for a proper purpose” an express power contained in the trust deed to add and exclude discretionary objects, having added a purpose trust as an object and removed all family members comprising the entire class of objects. The Background The trust settlors were two brothers who founded Formosa Plastics Group, one of the largest business conglomerates in Taiwan ...
Legal service providers (LSPs) in Bermuda are encouraged to contribute to the development and implementation of new and existing legislation in response to the ever-evolving needs of their clients ...
The recently released Rose Review progress report 2023 found that female founders defied a challenging economic climate to build more new businesses last year than ever before. The data insight and tracking that built on the inaugural findings of 2019, discovered that women-led companies had used ‘innovation and entrepreneurialism’ to tackle higher inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty to launch over 150,000 new companies in 2022 – more than twice as many as in 2018 ...
‘Flexibility becomes the norm as businesses look to build resilience in their real estate portfolio and workplace strategy.’ That is the key takeaway from Colliers’ recently released Global Occupier Outlook 2023 report, which found that two-thirds of corporate occupiers active in EMEA anticipate that up to 20% of their commercial real estate portfolio will move from traditional leases to flex leases within the next five years ...
"Leave this to me, I'm British… I know how to queue."{1} The Energy Services Operator (ESO) recently published a consultation which sets out a vision of medium-term reform for connections to (or affecting) the Transmission Network, whether they are directly connected or embedded ...
Labour party donor and entrepreneur, Dale Vince, has put the spotlight back on the controversy surrounding the tax treatment of carried interest received by private equity fund managers, by instructing The Good Law Project to serve a “pre-action protocol” letter on HMRC seeking judicial review of its practice of taxing such carried interest as capital gains as opposed to income ...
Figures published in May by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) record a further decline in Trade Union membership in the UK. Comparable data is only available as far back as 1995, but shows a clear decline over that nearly 30-year period to a level where, as at 2022, the proportion of UK workers in a union has declined to 23.1% - the lowest figure recorded in that time period ...
The economic landscape continues to place mortgage customers under significant pressure. Following discussions between the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and some of the largest mortgage lenders in the UK, the Mortgage Charter was signed to address measures aimed at helping customers who may be struggling to meet their mortgage repayments amid the cost-of-living crisis ...
On June 15, 2023, Law No. 21,577 (hereinafter, the "New Law") was enacted, which strengthens the prosecution of organized crime offenses, establishes special techniques for their investigation, and reinforces the confiscation of profits. The New Law modernizes the current criminal offenses related to organized crime and, at the same time, incorporates and improves the specialized techniques of investigation ...
Could Apple’s Vision Pro finally bring the metaverse to the masses? On 5 June, Apple introduced the world to the “Vision Pro”: its first entirely new product since the launch of Apple’s Polishing Cloth (if you’ve never heard of this either, it’s an expensive cloth to clean your screens with) ...
At the end of its 2023 term, the United States Supreme Court handed down several buzz-worthy decisions. Two opinions may have substantial and lasting impacts on employers and their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Court addressed religious accommodation and clarified the parameters of its “undue burden” standard set forth in its prior decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U. S. 63 (1977). 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2790 ...
With less than a month to go until the Consumer Duty comes into force on 31 July 2023, it is crucial that businesses are asking themselves the proper questions, reflecting on the right things, and having the honest discussions to ensure that they can maximise the remaining days left before the 31 July 2023 deadline ...
Introduction The sphere of asset tracing and recovery, particularly the extent of tools available around the world, is rightly attracting more attention in cross-border fraud and investigations. This includes projects at the international level, such as UNCITRAL's ongoing efforts (for which the author acts as an expert), as well as attention being given in national legislatures around the world ...
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996 to provide websites with immunity from liability arising from posting third-party content. For a service provider to be immune, however, the information at issue must be provided by another information content provider. This begs the question of whether website operators provide the content on their platforms or act solely as intermediaries for third-party content ...
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its much-anticipated decision in Abitron Austria GmbH, et al. (“Abitron et al.”) v. Hetronic International, Inc. (“Hetronic”) regarding the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act, the comprehensive trademark statute in the United States ...
In its second major False Claims Act decision in as many weeks, the Supreme Court sided with the Department of Justice in U.S. ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc., holding that the government may move to dismiss actions over the objections of the relator (whistleblower) even in cases where the government initially declined to intervene ...
The Supreme Court of the United States has denied a plea[i] to resolve a 20-year circuit split regarding the extent to which the Copyright Act preempts private contracts involving a promise not to copy digital content. The case stemmed from the petitioner Genius’s allegation that Google copied song lyrics from Genius’s website without permission and used them in connection with Google’s competing website ...
It is often acknowledged that, like fine wine, some things get better with age. However, the same is not always true of trust deeds – particularly those that may have been drafted using a mechanical typewriter or require service of notices by Telex. While families grow and evolve, legislation is regularly revised and expanded upon and technology continues to develop at an incredibly fast pace, trusts often remain unchanged ...
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program, has grabbed wide attention since its first introduction to the public. It has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history with more than 100 million monthly active users. People are amazed by its ability to respond intelligently to complex queries. ChatGPT is only one of the many AI tools that are being developed and used in various industries to improve efficiency and customer service ...
On 28 June 2023, Parliament adopted a new law on non-profit organisations and foundations (the “Law”). The Law aims to simplify and modernise the legal framework created by the century-old law of 21 April 1928, by replacing its outdated provisions. The main changes introduced by the Law are as follows: Significant simplification of the administrative procedures for incorporating and managing non-profit organisations ...
Latin Counsel Consortium Legal, one of the leading legal firms in Central America, announces the evolution of its brand as part of its commitment to continuous improvement and staying at the forefront of the market. With the largest legal team in the region, Consortium has always been committed to excellence and innovation to provide the best service to all its clients ...
