JSTL Expression Language (EL) not being resolved.

When the container is unable to resolve EL syntax ${}, in JSTL tags. There are a couple of things that you can do to get EL syntax resolving in your JSP's. I assume that you are running an application server supporting the JSP 1.2 and Servlet 2.3 specifications.

In order to evaluate EL expressions, your web.xml file must be up to date.
If your web.xml states that it is version 2.3 or less, EL evaluation is disabled by default for backwards compatibility.

If your web.xml reads:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>

Replace it with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<web-app xmlns=""http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"
version="2.4">

If you are unable to update your web.xml to a post 2.3 descriptor, then you can add the following to your jsp page to have EL evaluated:
<%@ page isElIgnored="false" %>
overriding the default configuration for a pre 2.4 descriptor.