Major Description
VariableResolverImpl tries to determine if it was invoked through the faces chain or jsp chain by looking for an attribute (Scope.getClassName()) in the RequestMap. However, that attribute is only set during the span of a call to FacesCompositeELResolver.getValue(). See FacesCompositeELResolver#invoke(), which calls setScope() and then unsetScope().
Therefore the following code always throws IllegalStateException
VariableResolver resolver = application.getVariableResolver();
Object result = resolver.resolveVariable(facesContext, "param");
because when VariableResolverImpl.resolveVariable() looks for the scope in the request map (which happens outside the getValue() call) its always null.