Chapter 2 explores how Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice translates to the context of international law and the concept of a special regime. According to Wenger, a community of practice is defined by the presence of three structural elements: there must be a mutual engagement of community members; community members must be engaged in a joint enterprise; and they must have a shared repertoire. Chapter 2 draws up the contours of a methodology that will help the classically trained legal scholar to justify propositions categorizing segments of the international legal system as special regimes, based on the idealist’s conception of a special regime. As the chapter demonstrates, the task needed to justify a suggestion that some subpart of the international legal system is a special regime is not significantly different from many investigations that classically trained legal scholars are already conducting, more or less as a matter of course.

A special regime is a subpart of the international legal system. This is why, in international legal discourse, there are several different conceptions of a special regime. For the same reason as lawyers disagree about the proper definition of the concept of international law, not only do they have different conceptions of an international legal system but they also assume different definitions of the concept of a special regime. There are considerable differences among the different conceptions of a special regime. This observation raises questions about their relative utility. Chapter 1 suggests the adoption of the conception that characterizes special regimes as communities of practice – as it helps to manage and control the effect of legal fragmentation compared to other conceptions.

Chapter 3 addresses the suggestion that for a special regime to exist, there must be a mutual engagement of community members. As the chapter argues, in the context of international law, a mutual engagement among a group of international law specialists can be inferred from their participation in a distinct legal discourse, and from their further specialization and distinct way of ascribing functions to legal agents. More specifically, it can be inferred from: the publication of specialized international law journals; the way of organization of conferences and workshops; the creation of inter-governmental organization; the work of NGOs; the specialized research profile of international scholars and description of chairs; their separation of tasks and division of labour; and the function that they ascribe to the judiciary and to the international legal scholar.

This chapter addresses the suggestion that for a special regime to exist, community members must be engaged in a joint enterprise. In the context of international law, to claim that a group of international law specialists is engaged in a joint enterprise is to assert that they do what they do based on the idea that some certain state of affairs is desirable. As Chapter 4 argues, in the context of international law, the existence of such a presupposition can be inferred from the actual pursuit of those specialists of a distinct state of affairs, and the way in which they perform assignments.

Since antiquity, arbitration has been well known in the Italian peninsula.1 Basic rules of arbitration are today spelled out in the Italian civil procedure code (hereinafter CCP). The code was enacted in 1940, but has, since then, undergone radical changes, including a comprehensive reform in 2006.2 Despite the fact that current rules are largely in line with those of other countries and with international legal standards, Italy is generally perceived, by insiders and outsiders alike, as a nonfriendly arbitration country.3