With the renewed focus on the criminal law brought about by the arrival of the Bribery Act 2010, in-house counsel may be forgiven for thinking that they are fully up to date with the potential consequences of corporate involvement in illegal activity. However, as we move through 2012, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has already …
Continue reading “How far will the SFO go to recover the proceeds of crime?”
In 2011 the government introduced a number of significant changes to the UK immigration regime that were aimed at reducing net migration by limiting the number of non-EU migrants permitted to come to the UK. Within the ‘high-value’ Tier 1 (Investor) and Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) categories, however, the opposite has been true. We have witnessed …
The Court of Appeal was recently given the opportunity to consider the remedy of rescission in Howard-Jones v Tate [2011] and in doing so, stressed a distinction between the remedies that are available to an innocent party where there has been a repudiatory breach of contract, and those situations where rescission ab initio will be …
Continue reading “Court of Appeal denies rescission of transfer of land for breach of contract”
On 12 September 2011 the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) published the revised version of its Rules of Arbitration, updating the 1998 Rules. The new Rules of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (the 2012 Rules)1 will come into force on 1 January 2012 and will be applicable to all ICC arbitrations (with some …
The promotion of renewable energy has increasingly been the focus of the government’s environmental policy in recent years, largely due to the UK’s ambitious carbon emission reduction targets and its underlying objective to source 15% of UK energy consumption from renewable resources by 2020, thus reducing our reliance on imported oil and gas supplies. This …
Continue reading “Where next for renewable energy projects?”
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2010 (Dodd-Frank) passed through US Congress and became law on 21 July 2010. It has been a controversial piece of legislation. In particular, it has significantly enhanced the whistleblower protections afforded by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley). These changes to the whistleblower regime will affect not …
The UK government is grappling with the most appropriate way to deal with corporate criminal liability in the context of serious fraud and corruption. Civil recovery orders can sometimes appear too lenient, but a full-blown criminal conviction (whether on the back of a negotiated plea agreement or otherwise) can lead to the complete demise of …
Continue reading “Deferred prosecution agreements: the way forward?”
In December 2011 the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) released three reports: an inspection of the UKBA Visa Section in New York; an annual report 2010-11; and a global review of entry clearance decision making. This article will look at the global review of entry clearance decision making.
The American Journal of International Law was founded by a group of publicists who believed that international law could abolish (or at least substantially diminish) the role of power in world affairs. But numerous articles in the journal focused on this relationship – how power constrains international law, how the powerful can harness international law …
Going into 2012, we’re now a decent enough distance away from September 2008 to know that the world changed and that the next few years will continue to be, well, different or the new normal, depending on your point of view. 2008-09 more or less coincided with the generational shifts that the internet is bringing …
Continue reading “Trends in information technology law: looking ahead to 2012”