Consulting Editor: Shalom Lerner. This volume contains the text of the papers and principal commentaries delivered at the 8th Biennial Conference of the IACCL held at Bar Ilan University in August 1996. The papers include original and practical papers on banking law, secured financing, securities regulation, the international sale of goods, competition law, electronic fund transfers, transnational commercial law, commercial law in Central and Eastern Europe, international demand guarantees, the UNIDROIT principles of international commercial law, company charges, consumer bankruptcies, European consumer rights, products liability, and international commercial arbitration. Contributors: James E. Byrne, R.C.C. Cuming, S.K. Date-Bah, Louis F. del Duca and Patrick del Duca, Anthony J. Duggan, Raul Etcheverry, Benjamin Geva, Roy Goode, Laureano F. Gutierrez-Falla, Attila Harmathy, Rafael Illescas-Ortiz, Donald B. King, Shalom Lerner, Ricardo Sandoval Lopez, Patrick Osode, Uriel Procaccia, Arcelia Quintana-Adriano, Jerzy Rajski, Arie Reich, Norbert Reich, Harry C. Sigman, Catherine Walsh, Jacob S. Ziegel.

All modern legal systems within advanced economies must address the question of how to respond to the needs of insolvent consumers whose burden of debt greatly exceeds their capacity to repay within a reasonable time frame. This study surveys comparatively the insolvency regimes currently in place or likely to be adopted in the foreseeable future in Canada, the United States, Australia, England and Wales, Scotland, Scandinavia and a representative group of Western countries on the continent of Europe. Modern legal systems have two basic alternatives in providing relief for over-committed consumers. The first, which involves restricting the enforcement of individual creditor remedies is a method with which this study is not concerned. Where the consumer is seriously insolvent and owes money to many creditors, a different approach is required - a collective solution to debtor's problems - and this, the solution provided by modern insolvency systems, is the focus of this study.