The Cornell University Center for Documentation on American Law in Paris will be dedicated July 17 before an audience of the world's leading jurists at an international judicial conference.

The new legal center is an initiative of the Cornell Law School, a leader in international legal perspective law and scholarship, and the Cour de cassation, the highest court in the French judiciary. The center, which will be located within the court in the Palais de Justice, will house 13,000 law books from Cornell's Law Library and will offer special training and instruction in online research by Cornell law librarians.

The dedication ceremony will take place during a first-ever conference attended by the chief justices of European Union countries and the United States. Among those expected to attend are U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer. The conference will be chaired by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the lord chief justice of England and Wales.

The new partnership with the Cour de cassation "shows imagination and is yet another indication of the increased role we are playing in Europe," said Stewart J. Schwab, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the law school.

"You and your school are taking a pioneering decision, which is bound to have deep political and judicial and intellectual repercussions for which I not only congratulate you but also thank you, profoundly," First President Guy Canivet of the Cour de cassation wrote to Schwab. Canivet, who is France's highest judge, supported creating the Cornell center, which is hoped will lead to enhanced dialogue between judges and academics of the two countries and even have an impact on political relations. Sir Basil Markesinis, a leading legal scholar at University College London and the University of Texas at Austin, who has taught at Cornell Law School, was instrumental in establishing the center.

Attending the ceremony from Cornell will be Schwab and Claire Germain, the Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of Law.

The new partnership supplements the Cornell Law School's current relationships in France, including its 14-year joint venture with the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), the Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law in Paris, and a four-year American/French law degree program: the J.D./Master en Droit.