Paolo Vargiu

As an educator, I am always pondering my teaching methods and questioning whether they are adequate for my students' growth. I have recently revisited Karl Llewellyn's " The Bramble Bush ", a book that had a profound impact on my intellectual and academic development. In the very first pages, Llewellyn demystifies the legend that the study of law is (or could be) limited to learning the rules. His words made me consider my own teaching, and how much of it is reliant on the shortcut of simply paraphrasing the rules. While teaching jurisprudence, I can easily avoid using specific provisions, except for rudimentary examples when necessary, and prioritize instead instilling the underlying principles in my students. Similarly, when it comes to teaching investment law, I have found that focusing on specific treaty rules may prove futile. Although the rules may be virtually the same across different treaties, the diversity in their interpretation by tribunals renders them un...

Having had to spend the better part of last year on bed rest, I had considerable time to devote to researching and writing about the protection of places of worship under international law. While my article, soon to be published in Ephemerides Iuris Canonici , briefly touched upon a rather thought-provoking question on whether places of worship could also be considered as religious symbols, I was unable to delve into it due to constraints of space and coherence. However, peer-reviewers, colleagues, and even myself (if I can immodestly say so) recognized it as one of the most interesting aspects of the article. After submitting the final draft, the question continued to nag at me, prompting me to embark on a new side-project. While I have only drafted an extended abstract and shared it with a few colleagues, their insightful feedback has raised numerous pertinent questions, which could potentially take a decade to fully explore. Nevertheless, I am confident that this is a worthwhile res...