Reno to dedicate new Law School library

The Law School will officially dedicate Nicole E. Tanenbaum Hall as its new law library and student activities building today in a ribbon-cutting and convocation ceremony. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno will deliver the keynote address at an invitation-only dedication in Irvine Auditorium and will be introduced by Law Professor Lani Guinier. Tours of the new building will be given following the dedication ceremony. Interim President Claire Fagin and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson will jointly present Reno with the University's Medal for Distinguished Achievement, awarded by the Trustees to those who "embody the highest ideal of the University." Law Dean Colin Diver will present the Law School's highest honor in absentia to retired Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., a 1928 University graduate. Brennan will not appear at today's ceremony on orders from his physician. The Wilson Award commemorates the University's first professor of law, James Wilson. Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the Constitution's architects and sat on the country's first Supreme Court. After the Irvine ceremony, the academic procession will return to the Law School for the official ribbon cutting and gala open house. Law School graduate and University Trustee Myles Tanenbaum will formally dedicate the building in memory of his daughter Nicole, who died from leukemia at the age of 16. Tanenbaum chaired the $52 million fundraising campaign for the design and construction of the new library building. The Biddle Law Library's approximately 540,000 volumes will not be moved to the top four levels of the five-story Tanenbaum Hall until next fall,but the building's classrooms will become functional in November. The library has been housed in the building next door, Lewis Hall, since the turn of the century.