I'm going to guess that your problem is due to the use of jstl in building the select list. I think that you'll find that the jstl doesn't evaluate correctly when you submit, hence you get an empty list. Grab the JSF sources and use your debugger to see whats going on (start by breaking where the exception occurs and see what is in the list of items) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4085603#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...