The Cornell Law School's Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law comes with some terrific fringe benefits. Chief among them is the location: smack dab in the middle of Paris' Latin Quarter, where students can stroll along the Seine or sip café crème in open-air cafés between classes.

Classes in the five-week program take place at the Faculté de droit, France's oldest law program, and its campus is part of the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, which has 13th-century roots.

But perhaps the Paris Summer Institute's biggest strength is its international character: Nearly 60 percent of its 91 students this summer hailed from countries other than the United States, including Mexico, Canada, Japan, Brazil, India, Egypt and France. "When else would I get the opportunity to meet future lawyers from around the world?" asked Junaid Subhan, a student from McGill University in Montreal who attended this summer.

"I wanted us to offer a solid program in international and comparative law in a place where English was not the native language and where students could begin to see how other legal systems function," said founder and co-director John Barceló about the program's beginnings 14 years ago. "It was important that it take place at the Sorbonne, which is the leading university in the country with one of the leading civil law systems in the world."

Barceló, who is Cornell Law School's Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law, approached Cornell alumnus Xavier Blanc-Jouvan, then director of the Institute for Comparative Law at Panthéon-Sorbonne, who helped secure the approval of that institution's dean. A grant from an anonymous Cornell donor and funds from the Berger International Legal Studies Program, which Barceló directs, got the now self-sustaining program off the ground in 1994.

"It's an important vehicle for raising the Law School's visibility in the rest of the world," noted Larry S. Bush, who co-directs the program with Barceló and is executive director of the Law School's Clarke Center for International and Comparative Legal Studies. "Quite a few attendees go on to our master of laws program."

Paris Summer Institute classes are in English. Faculty are from the Cornell Law School and Panthéon-Sorbonne. The curriculum, which features a dozen courses -- including ones on French law, American law, international human rights, and law and social science -- has a comparative slant. That's helpful to students like Subhan, a Canadian, for whom the American legal system is challenging to understand. "You don't just pick up a book and read about it," he said. In addition, "French civil law is very different from the law I see in Quebec," which has both civil and common law components thanks to Canada's British and French heritage. "In common law there are long, elaborate judgments, with numerous footnotes that draw on different sources, whereas civil law judgments are usually a succinct paragraph." The program has helped him discern the differences.

Handan Orel, a law student at Koç University in Istanbul, enrolled in the Paris Summer Institute because "I wanted to improve my French, learn more about international law and have Cornell professors instruct me. Cornell is prestigious, and Paris is a beautiful city." Orel, who eventually wants to practice law in her native country and abroad, said, "It's exciting to me that common law uses the concept of a jury and involves the public in the legal process and trials."

Kyu-won Choi, a Korean student at Panthéon-Sorbonne, who enrolled in the Paris institute this summer, said the teaching methods were eye-opening. "I'd never had the Socratic method of teaching before, and I really liked getting to participate and figure out answers for ourselves."

"I chose Cornell with the summer institute in mind, and I would absolutely recommend it to others," said Barbara Hungerford, a second-year J.D./LL.M. student at Cornell Law School. "My comparative law classes were interesting, and the experience has proved a good topic of conversation during job interviews."

"The best part was getting an overview of the civil law system from courses and classmates," said Sahand Boorboor, another second-year, dual-degree Cornell law student, who also managed to squeeze in weekend trips to Cannes, Nice and Rome.

French-born Claire Germain, Cornell Law School professor and Edward Cornell Librarian, who teaches introductory French law at the Paris institute, said, "I love to share what I know with the students, and it's even more exciting because it's in Paris."

The program also offers courses in French, forays to historic places and talks by such international law experts as former United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who spoke in July to students and alumni about the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. The program also runs a series of conferences on comparative law in Paris that have produced books.

Freelancer Linda Myers is a former writer for the Cornell Chronicle.