Law Firm

After Sackett: A Multi-Prong Strategy

The Supreme Court’s wetlands opinion was terrible. Now what are we doing?

The Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case dramatically curtails the permitting program covering wetlands. We urgently need to find strategies for saving the wetlands the Court left unprotected. We have a number of possible strategies and need to start working on implementing them immediately.

Sackett was unquestionably a major blow, reducing federal jurisdiction over wetlands beyond what even the Trump Administration embraced. A wetland is now covered only if it meets two requirements: “first, that the adjacent [body of water constitutes] . . . ‘water[s] of the United States’ (ie, a relatively permanent body of water connected to traditional interstate navigable waters); and second, that wetland has a continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.”

This myopic definition ignores the

PCL Lawyers is committed to fostering upcoming legal talent, proudly announcing Hayley Barrow as the recipient of their 2023 Legal Scholarship. Hayley is in her final year studying Law and Psychology at La Trobe University. the PCL Lawyers Legal Scholarship was established with the objective of promoting the development of exceptional young legal minds. By recognizing and supporting talented individuals PCL Lawyers aims to empower the next generation of legal professionals. PCL Lawyers started the scholarship during the lockdowns of 2020 in Victoria with the aim to provide financial assistance, mentorship opportunities, and recognition to deserving students, enabling them to overcome financial barriers and fully focus on their legal studies. Since then, the scholarship has been expanded and is now being offered to eligible law students Australia wide.

Hayley Barrow, a diligent and passionate law student, has exemplified the qualities that PCL Lawyers seek in a scholarship recipient. With

Nature and the Pursuit of Happiness

The original understanding of an inalienable right.

What is the “pursuit of happiness,” which the Declaration of Independence says is an alienable right? It sounds like this is about freedom from governmental restrictions on your activities. So, in modern terms, it seemed to mean that the government can’t stop you from “doing your own thing.”

But that can’t be right. The Declaration says we have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The reference to “liberty” already covers the freedom to pursue your own goals, whether that’s your own happiness or something else. So, what did Jefferson mean by the right to the pursuit of happiness?

Important philosophers of the time exhausted the rational pursuit of “true and solid happiness.” Locke argued that in “pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, we are obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our

The public sector equality duty (“PSED”) imposed by section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 is a procedural obligation that requires public bodies to have due regard to the equality needs listed in that section when exercising their functions. This appeal concerns the territorial scope of the PSED. It raises the issue of whether a public body is required under the PSED to have due regard to people living outside the United Kingdom when exercising its functions.

The Appellant is a Palestinian refugee currently living in Lebanon, having fled the conflict in Syria. She asserted that she should be treated as eligible to come to the United Kingdom under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (“the Resettlement Scheme”) instituted by the Government in 2014. However, the Resettlement Scheme was applied only to refugees referred to by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”). The Appellant is outside the remit of

Technology’s Role in Governing Sustainable Food Systems

Digitalization is changing how we understand the environment and act on issues of sustainability.

This article is a summary of the third interview in a three-part interview series that explores how digitalization is reshaping environmental governance. I spoke with Sake Kruk who’s a Ph.D. researcher at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands. His research examines how digital technologies are ushering in a new form of environmental governance within food systems, specifically as it relates to sustainability assurance within aquaculture. Aquaculture includes the breeding, rearing and harvesting of fish and other aquatic animals or plants, while sustainability assurance is the process of monitoring and assessing the sustainability claims of producers who are seeking to satisfy sustainability standards.

Sustainability assurance within aquaculture has traditionally been performed by corporate, non-profit and governmental initiatives. A few examples include corporate social responsibility and eco-certification programs,

PCL Lawyers proudly celebrates the promotion of eight exceptional legal professionals, commending their remarkable skills and dedication across diverse practice areas.

The firm’s commitment to recognizing the expertise and supporting the continuous growth of senior lawyers is emphasized by Lauren Croft in her recent article for Lawyers Weekly.

Meet our newly promoted team:

Emma Restall – Building & Construction

Harish Nair – Building & Construction

Chris Karatselios – Commercial

Douglas McMillan – Family Law

Ian Isaacs – Family Law

Phil Drew – Wills & Estates

Tayla Williamson – Building & Construction

Joanna Shaft – Litigation & Disputes

Managing Partner, Glenn Duker, expressed his enthusiasm for the promotions and the firm’s continued growth. He stated, “These well-earned promotions are a testament to the exceptional commitment our lawyers have demonstrated to their clients and to the PCL brand. We are proud to recognize their contributions and to invest in their continued growth

ICANN has decided to make a change to the upcoming new version of Verisign’s .net registry agreement in response to public comments, but it’s not the change most commenters wanted.

In the near-unprecedented nod to the public comment process, the Org said it’s agreed with Verisign to change two instances of upper-case “S” in the term “Security and Stability” to lower case.

That’s it.

Some commenters had wrung their hands over the fact that the .net contract includes upper-case “Security and Stability” as defined terms, in contrast to the lower-case “security and stability” found in other gTLD contracts.

Based on a strict reading, this could in some circumstances give Verisign an excuse to avoid implementing the ICANN Consensus Policies, commenters including the Business Constituency and Intellectual Property Constituency noted,

It appears that this was an oversight by ICANN and Verisign rather that some kind of nefarious plot. In its public

How much credit can California take for the electric vehicle revolution?

New CLEE report responds to criticism over how the state quantifies policy impacts

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is the state’s lead agency on zero-emission vehicle policy, from its first-in-the-nation mandate on automakers to produce zero-emission models to its wide-ranging incentive programs, among other policy approaches . But in 2021, the California State Auditor is released a report criticizing how CARB measures the effects of its zero-emission vehicle policies. Specifically, the report concluded that the agency “has not done enough to measure the [greenhouse gas] emissions reductions its individual transportation programs achieve.” The Auditor’s report further recommended that CARB officials make efforts to better estimate the precise greenhouse gas emissions reductions and other co-benefits from each individual transportation program.

Following the Auditor’s report, CARB contracted with UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE), along

In this post, Jack Prytherch, Of Counsel in the Tax Disputes & Investigations team at CMS, comments on the Supreme Court’s decision in HMRC v SSE Generation Ltd [2023] UKSC 17, which was handed down on 17 May 2023. The issue before the Supreme Court was the extent to which SSE Generation Ltd (“SSE”) was entitled to claim capital allowances on expenditure incurred when constructing the hydro-electric power station at Glendoe, Fort Augustus in Scotland (the “Glendoe Scheme”). The CMS Tax Disputes & Investigations team was pleased to have advised SSE on this case. Counsels for SSE were Jonathan Peacock KC and Michael Ripley.

backgrounds

Capital expenditure is not generally deductible from income for the purpose of calculating trading profits subject to corporation tax. However, the Capital Allowances Act 2001 (“CAA 2001”) provides for capital allowances to be claimed in relation to certain categories