Abstract
How can international sporting federations be regulated by law? This question is analytically dependent on a narrower question, whether there is a definable concept called international sports law. This article distinguishes between ‘international sports law’ and ‘global sports law’. International sports law can be applied by national courts. Global sports law by contrast implies a claim of immunity from national law. Conceptually, it is a cloak for continued self-regulation by international sports federations and a claim for non-intervention by national legal systems and by international sports law. It thus opposes a rule of law in regulating international sport.
Highlights
The globalisation of sport has moved the focus of legal regulation increasingly onto international sports federations
Is there is a distinct character to the rules that emerge from this international governance? Can these rules rightly be termed lex sportiva so that they should be immune from national legal regimes? Do international sporting federations have a distinct sphere of legal autonomy for their governance of sport? To answer these questions needs a careful analysis of the definitions used in this field
Either ‘international sports law’ as used by him reflects distinct and original principles that are specific to the nature of sport, that is, the transnational norms that characterise global law, or it is a subdivision of public international law drawing on the same type of sources as other subdivisions
Summary
The globalisation of sport has moved the focus of legal regulation increasingly onto international sports federations. Its chief characteristics are first that it is a contractual order, with its binding force coming from agreements to submit to the authority and jurisdiction of international sporting federations, and second that it is not governed by national legal systems It would be in Teubner’s phrase truly a ‘global law without a state.’ It is a sui generis set of principles created from transnational legal norms generated by the rules, and the interpretation thereof, of international sporting federations. This is a separate legal order that is globally autonomous. This allows the private regimes of international sporting federations, such as the IOC or FIFA, to be legally unaccountable except by arbitration systems established and validated by those very same private regimes
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