Created in 1992, the Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational institution which seeks to develop the legal infrastructure necessary to facilitate the movement of goods, services and investment capital in the Western Hemisphere. The Center conducts comparative legal and transactional studies of the disparate laws, practices and attitudes among countries of the Western Hemisphere desiring to participate in a free trade area. The Center's various projects serve to identify and eliminate the structural legal obstacles to free trade through the harmonization of commercial laws and practice and the standardization of legal documentation. To develop and implement recommendations, the Center brings together representatives from the legal, commercial, governmental, academic and non-government organizational sectors. The Center also acts as a conduit for the exchange of information through publication of studies and books, presentation of conferences and seminars, and by maintaining a legal database (InterAm) of Latin American legislation and secondary materials.

To create the necessary legal infrastructure for free trade in the Western Hemisphere, the Center uses both the traditional "top-down" as well as an innovative "bottom-up" approach to standardization, uniformity and harmonization of law. The top-down approach relies on treaties or model laws to bring about uniformity of law and practice. The bottom-up approach involves representatives of business, trade and professional groups to identify, select and, in some cases, formulate the best practices to be followed. These are practices consistent not only with the most efficient and cost effective manner of conducting business, but also with accepted principles of international fairness.

The Center believes that democracy can only come to Latin America when the power to make commercial and economic development laws is transferred from the traditional governmental and governmentally connected elites to the actual economic players and affected parties of legislation, trade agreements, and public policy - the lenders and borrowers of commercial credit, the developers of software and pharmaceuticals, the owners, managers and workers in factories and maquilas, the shippers and truckers of goods, and the producers of hazardous waste and the individuals and communities who have to contend with its shipment, storage and management. This is a concept that the Center has been championing from its inception and is reflected in the Center’s bottom-up working group approach to legal reform, harmonization and uniformity.

The Center has undertaken work in the following substantive areas: 1) Banking; 2) Environment; 3) Intellectual Property; 4) Labor; 5) Secured Financing; 6) Securities; 7) Transportation; and 8) Website and Electronic Database.

The Center's list of publications includes the following topical selections: 1) harmonization of the secured financing laws of the NAFTA partners, with a focus on Mexico; 2) labor law for U.S. maquilas and foreign companies doing business in Mexico; 3) uniform North American powers of attorney; 4) transportation law and practice in North America; 5) the disparities between the law and practice in the management of hazardous waste in the U.S. and Mexico; and 6) a translation of Mexico's new customs law and regulation.

The Center has recently launched a biweekly publication entitled "Inter-American Trade Report." The Report's purposes are four-fold: 1) to inform readers about recent developments that impact directly upon the decisions to trade and invest in the Americas; 2) to link its articles, commentaries and summaries with the more detailed information available on the Center's InterAm database (the most complete and accessible in the hemisphere); 3) to serve as an ongoing forum for both printed and electronic discussion; and 4) to facilitate trade and investment by helping to identify legal, business and bureaucratic obstacles to hemispheric free trade.

The Center's hemispheric mission came about partly because of the creation of sister centers in Argentina and Peru. The impending creation of centers in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Venezuela provides further impetus. The Center's cooperative agreement with the Organization of American States adds urgency to this mission, as does the endorsement of the hemispheric mission of the national law centers by the successive "Summits of the Americas." The Center was officially designated host for the OAS Convention on Choice of Law on Contractual Matters, and it provided assistance for adoption of the United States position on this convention. The Center also provided research assistance for adoption of the United States position on the United Nations convention on standby letters of credit and bank guarantees. Because of its involvement with the OAS Convention, the Center was asked by the OAS Secretariat to suggest research topics for the work agenda of the Sixth Inter-American Specialized Conference on Private International Law (CIDIP-VI).

The Center represented the United States at the meeting of the Committee of Experts of CIDIP-VI recently held in Valencia, Venezuela. During this meeting, the Center’s suggestion that the OAS consider treaties or model laws in the area of asset-based secured financing was adopted by the Committee of Experts. In addition, a number of Latin American delegates expressed the interest of their respective countries to modernize their secured financing and commercial registry laws along the lines being worked upon by the Center and the Mexican government. In addition, they expressed interest in having their countries become a part of a network of electronic commercial registries that would create an integrated commercial credit market in the Americas.

The Center’s founder and executive director, Dr. Boris Kozolchyk, is an internationally recognized scholar in commercial and international law, including international banking law, letters of credit and comparative commercial law. Dr. Kozolchyk is a U.S. Delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), U.S. Delegate to the OAS CIDIP-V Treaty Process, and a former representative of the United States Council on International Banking (USCIB) to the International Chamber of Commerce Working Group for the revision of the Uniform Customs and Practices for Documentary Credits. He teaches law at the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Kozolchyk has taught and lectured in most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere, and he has served as a consultant on trade law to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Justice, the OAS’s Conference on Private International Law, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He has also served as a consultant to numerous public and private organizations. Dr. Kozolchyk holds a Doctorate in Civil Law from his native Cuba, and he received an LL.B. from the University of Miami College of Law and an LL.M. and S.J.D. from the University of Michigan College of Law.