Preface to Volume 8, Issue 1

Dear Readers, Nearly nine years ago, the Trento Student Law Review was founded on a simple but ambitious idea: to create a forum capable of combining academic rigour with practical relevance, while encouraging open and well-informed discussion on the most pressing questions of contemporary law. We are therefore pleased to present the first issue of Volume 8. This issue has seen a significant increase in submissions, once again confirming the interest that the Review continues to attract among both first-time and more experienced authors. The six articles collected in this issue – one in Italian and five in English – reflect an engagement with legal writing that crosses not only different fields of law, but also different periods and legal traditions, ranging from Roman law to artificial intelligence. The latter, in particular, is an area in relation to which no legal or academic actor can afford to remain passive. In the volumes ahead, the Review, too, will have to define its own position on the use of AI, locating it realistically between uncritical permissiveness and, conversely, short-sighted intolerance. Taken together, these contributions do not seek to impose a single thematic trajectory. Their value lies, rather, in the variety of the questions they raise: from tax law and the legal consequences of maternity to Roman legal tradition, EU digital regulation, international law, AI governance, and criminal justice. What holds them together is not a shared subject matter, but a common editorial premise: that legal scholarship remains meaningful when it moves across contexts without losing rigour, sensitivity, and attention to concrete legal problems. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Rossella Borella, who preceded me as Editor-in-Chief. The continuity that the Review has been able to preserve, despite a largely renewed editorial team and the transition to a new Board, owes much to the seriousness and generosity with which she accompanied this passage. Her work left us not only a solid editorial structure, but also a calm and collaborative environment in which taking up this responsibility was far less difficult than it could have been. If there is a common thread running through these six contributions, despite their evident differences in subject matter, method, and geographical scope, it may be found in a shared resistance to oversimplification. Each article, in its own way, brings legal analysis back into contact with the complexity of facts, the reality of lived experience, and the limits of power, whether public or private. It is perhaps here that a Review such as ours continues to find its purpose: not in offering easy answers, but in preserving, with seriousness and intellectual curiosity, a space for critical reflection. It is in this spirit that I wish all our readers an engaging and rewarding reading experience. I also hope that this issue will offer not only material for study, but further reasons to believe that law, when it remains attentive to its human dimension, continues to be an essential tool for understanding and orientation.