Paolo Vargiu

At this point in every academic year I perform the same morbid ritual of starting to count how many classes remain until freedom and then quietly weep when the first digit is a 4. Usually this is the season of attrition, because the weather is terrible, it gets dark at 4 in the afternoon, the lectures feel longer, the weeks feel shorter, and my students show the conversational energy of ornamental houseplants. This year, however, something odd has happened. My body has been experiencing a fit of creative writing of its own since last November, and has taken to sending me daily mixed signals that make me briefly wonder whether I should be revising my lecture slides or my will. To complicate things we have the fact that it’s literally a roulette of symptoms, each one cheerfully unhelpful, like a doctor who only communicates via riddles. So, against all reasonable expectation, teaching has become the steadiest thing in my life. My timetable, the classrooms, the brain-numbing slides, even ...

In a strange sort of accident, this academic year I’ve ended up teaching tort law. I didn’t set out to do it, really, and I certainly did not grow up thinking “yes, negligence and nuisance, that’s where I’ll plant my flag”. I picked it because I had to pick something, or it was going to be picked for me. One of those institutional inevitabilities, like fire doors that must be kept closed or the fact that the printer in the corridor is always out of toner (good thing that I don’t use that one anymore). I chose it because, faced with the list of core modules, it seemed like the one I would dislike the least. There’s a difference between liking and disliking the least; it’s the margin of survival. However, here I am, some weeks in, and I find myself, absurdly, enjoying it. I’m even starting to see the outlines of moral philosophy wearing the wig of practicality. People injure each other in the most inventive ways, and the law tries to make sense of that. Tort law, in its unassuming way, i...

I am on annual leave, I am reading Javier Cercas' beautiful book on his trip to Mongolia with Pope Francis, and I am obviously thinking myself about how I teach law and religion (and, by the way, if the word “religion” makes you think only of incense smoke, Gregorian chants, or the big scary abstractions in comparative theology textbooks, you’re already missing the point): it’s not just one of those optional “modules” in the human-civilisation syllabus. It’s more like the deep slow-moving tectonic plate under the entire legal landscape, the one that explains why certain laws feel natural and others feel like the bureaucratic equivalent of being forced to wear someone else’s shoes. Some colleagues tend to pretend (or think, which is rather dangerous) that law is self-propelling—sui generis—as if its origins are purely in rational deliberation among formally equal actors. (They’re not.) In fact, legal systems have been marinated for centuries in the moral imaginaries of religious tra...

As part of trying to make sense of the year that just happened - teaching, writing, occasionally sleeping – I am starting here with some thoughts on my Law and Religion module. It was my first time teaching it, and like most firsts, it was equal parts thrilling, awkward, enlightening, and vaguely chaotic. But something happened when things clicked, and students cared; therefore, before it all blurs into next year’s to-do list, I wanted to write a little of it down. I called the first unit “Law, Religion and the Backstory” because it sounded like something a person might actually want to read (or click, these days) on. The idea was that each unit would be “Law, Religion and…” something - “Law, Religion and Rights,” “Law, Religion and the Courts,” “Law, Religion and the Infinite Bureaucratic Machine” - but it turns out the backstory is complicated, and possibly cursed. I was trying to be clever, or at least less boring than “History of Law and Religion,” which feels like a one-way ticket...

With today’s tutorial, I slam the door on the 2024–2025 academic year - a year that began, by most estimates, sometime after the Norman Conquest but before the invention of the dishwasher, and has only recently released us from its stubborn and faintly damp grasp. Term 1 stretched on like one of those Russian novels you feel virtuous owning but morally depleted trying to finish - page after page of existential trudgery. Term 2, by contrast, shot past like a shopping trolley (or my wheelchair) careening downhill: fast, erratic, and ending in a minor collision. Except for March. March, evidently, now comes in a new 14-week format, an extended director’s cut of confusion and deadlines. Since the memories are still vaguely warm, like the sad slice of toast forgotten under the tea towel, I am scribbling down some notes before the rot sets in, just enough to remind myself in October, when I’m muttering “how the hell did we get here again?” into my second coffee, that I have been through this...

An often forgotten thing about law is that it’s all words. Words in statutes, words in contracts, words in judgments, words in emails that make you wonder if some people have evolved beyond the need for punctuation. And yet, despite this, too many a law student (and, let’s be honest, quite a few lawyers) seem to believe they can master the trade without ever thinking too hard about language itself. They pore over legislation, memorise cases, and produce essays so structurally sound they could double as Brutalist architecture, but ask them to read a novel and they look at you like you’ve suggested taking up juggling as a form of professional development. Which is a shame, because literature teaches what no statute book ever will: how words work. It teaches rhythm, persuasion, subtext. It shows how meaning shifts depending on context, how ambiguity isn’t always a flaw but sometimes the very point. One can learn the law by reading legal texts, but no one can learn how to argue - really ar...

Is it my job to prepare students for legal practice? The question comes up often enough that I sometimes wish I had a little badge to flash when it’s asked - something modest, tasteful, nothing flashy, just a plain card reading "I am not a careers advisor". It would save time, and we would all be spared that awkward smile people give when they realize I’m not going to help their child learn how to write a 600-word brief. That's because teaching law is not about teaching the law. It’s about teaching students how to think about the law, which is like teaching someone how to play jazz by handing them sheet music for Bach. Yes, it’s incredibly hard work, but so is everything worthwhile. The trouble is that a lot of people misunderstand what education is for. They think I’m here to assemble barristers like IKEA wardrobes or to hammer out solicitors on some ancient academic forge. Sorry, but no. My job is to mess with their heads - not in the shifty-eyed, Kafkaesque sense (alth...

On Monday I'll start teaching a new module. It’s mine - conception, design, execution. A virgin territory of legal pedagogy, untouched by other hands, and, yes, I suppose I’m proud of it. It feels a little like Frankenstein must have felt, looking at his creation before it began demanding all his free time and racking up the electricity bill. There’s the rush of novelty, the thrill of steering a ship I have built myself, but also the sinking realisation that I might now have to sail it through waters I haven’t charted and might not like. Fifteen years and counting of teaching law has left me, if not jaded, then at least comfortable. Comfortably numb, one might say, but that’s a touch melodramatic. The point is, most of my lectures are as finely aged as a good Camembert. I know where the tricky bits are, where the students will glaze over, where to throw in a joke about some current event to rouse them from their torpor. Everything is prepped, polished, and on autopilot. Occasionall...

 For fifteen years, I have resisted the siren call of the written lecture. Not out of laziness or disdain for preparation, but out of principle: from the moment I first stood in front of a classroom clutching a remote for a PowerPoint presentation, I always believed that the alchemy of a good lecture was not in the script, but in the delivery. I honed my craft during my PhD years, taking perhaps one too many public speaking workshop and eventually teaching some myself. It became clear to me that the essence of teaching was not in reading from a page, but in the living act of storytelling. Slides became my scaffolding, more detailed when the subject matter was unfamiliar, sparser and more evocative when it was well within my wheelhouse. The classroom became a sort of a stage, and at times I acted as equal parts scholar and raconteur (whether I was any good at the latter should be a question for my former students). This approach has served me well: over the years, I have relished th...

A new academic year is starting tomorrow and for some unclear reason I am feeling thrilled. Obviously, what is getting my blood pumping is not the prospect of teaching per se – that can be amazing, obviously, but after a few years it becomes too familiar a feeling to be a source of excitement – but rather the necessary structure and discipline it demands. I figured out, over the years, that summer may not be the most productive time of the year for me, writing-wise. I certainly have much more time in my hands than during teaching terms, but I also realised that open-ended mornings and afternoons make for fantastic reading slots – not so much for writing. Teaching brings with itself a schedule, non-negotiable commitments, and a sense of urgency: if I want to write until my class at 3 pm, I must get to it as soon as possible, which means that I have to deal with emails, administration and other less-than-interesting tasks quickly so that I have that coveted couple of hours to write. The ...

After a year-long hiatus, punctuated with a pleasant period of study leave and a harrowing few months on sick leave, I finally find myself, once again, in the familiar role of coaching my students for the Vis Moot. It is an endeavour that evokes ambivalence, akin to reuniting with an old friend who, while cherished, demands considerable time and energy. But let me be honest - how have I missed it! From an external perspective, the duties of a coach might seem limited to steering students through simulated legal proceedings, be it in an English courtroom or an American-style arbitration. Yet those who take part in a moot court, be they coaches or mooters, recognize its deeper essence. While the foundation undoubtedly lies in legal preparation and the students' professional growth, my emphasis - and the sentiment I strive to impart - transcends these bounds. When I speak to the new Vis Moot students, the first thing I try to stress upon is the fact that lawyers, and mooters, do not j...

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...