About the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law (IACCL)

Founded in the early 1980s, the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law continues to contribute to development of a more rational world order by “identifying the international nature of commerce, the common problems faced across jurisdictions and the benefits in solving commercial and consumer problems by attention to approaches elsewhere.”¹

Legal experts from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America participate in Biennial Conferences of the Academy. Emergence of global markets, new information technologies, and the chaos of international terrorism impose a new sense of urgency on the need to rationalize political, economic and social interchange by development of new institutions, procedures and norms in an increasingly interrelated world.

Conference discussions and papers presented facilitate the exchange of ideas amongst distinguished scholars in their areas of expertise. The IACCL has met all over the world. Its biennial conferences have been held at Bond University in Australia; University of Innsbruck in Austria; Oxford University in England; Max Planck Institute in Germany; Bar Ilan University in Israel; Riga Graduate School of Law in Latvia; National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico; University of Stockholm in Sweden; and Harvard, Penn State Dickinson, St. Louis and Texas universities in the United States.

At its 10th Biennial Meeting, the Academy bestowed recognition awards for outstanding work in negotiation, preparation and implementation of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods to John Honnold, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Kazuaki Sono, dean of the Faculty of Law and Policy, Tezukayama University in Japan, and Gerrold Herrmann, then secretary of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and chief of the International Trade Law Branch, Office of Legal Affairs, United Nations, Vienna. Professor Honnold and Dean Sono preceded Gerrold Herrmann in this capacity.

Recognition awards were also bestowed for outstanding work in negotiation, preparation and implementation of the Principles of International Commercial Contracts to Professor Michael Joachim Bonell of the University of Rome Law School and consultant to the International Institute for Unification of Private Law headquartered in Rom , Italy, and Walter Rodino, deputy secretary general of the Institute.

At its 12th Biennial Meeting, the Academy honored Ole Lando, professor of comparative law at the Copenhagen Business School, president of the Commission on European Contract Law and member of the Working Group for the Preparation of the UNIDROIT Principles on International Commercial Contracts, in recognition of his outstanding work in negotiating, preparing and implementing the Principles of European Contract Law.

______________________________
¹Commercial and Consumer Law; National and International Dimensions, Preface (Ross Cranston & Roy Goode eds., Claredon Press Oxford, 1993). (We borrow this language from the eloquent preface by Oxford Professors Ross Cranston and Roy Goode to the proceedings of the fifth meeting of the Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law held in Oxford in August 1990).