WASHINGTON

In a little more than a week, a court in Paris will decide whether a law professor in New York committed criminal libel by publishing a book review.

No author enjoys a negative review. But most writers limit themselves to a predictable set of responses on reading a cutting evaluation of their work, usually in this order: incredulity, embarrassment, self-loathing, stewing, grumbling, anger, scheming and letter to the editor.

Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law and Business in Israel and the author of “The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court,” was more creative. She lodged a criminal complaint in a country with almost no connection to the book or the review.

You are by now probably curious about what the review could possibly have said.

It was four paragraphs long and published in 2007 on Global Law Books, a Web site associated with The European Journal of International Law. It was sober, technical and mild. Indeed, it would not be hard to find a more caustic review on any given Sunday in this newspaper.