On the Definitions Used in Sports Law

Abstract

The article concentrates on the study of the basic concepts used in the text of the Federal Law of December 4, 2007 N 329-FZ «On physical culture and sports in the Russian Federation». The definitions of the concepts «sport» and «physical culture» are analyzed. The authors have concluded that the legal definition of sport is consistent with the broad understanding of this phenomenon in science. It has been proved that the legislator uses the constitutive features of sport and physical culture in a contradictory way when giving other definitions. This problem has been revealed during the study of the concepts: «school sport», «student sport», «corporate sport», the content of which combines both features of sport and features of physical culture. The authors also propose to distinguish between the physical education for physically impaired people and persons with disabilities, aimed at rehabilitation and sports activities of the same categories, aimed at achieving purely sports results by developing appropriate definitions and fixing them in the text of the studied law. Attention is drawn to the impossibility of determining the ratio of such concepts as «corporate sport» and «sport at the place of work», «sport at the place of residence and recreation» and «mass sport» for reasons caused by defects in legislative technology. Such categories as «professional sports», «sports of the highest achievements» and «mass sports» are discriminated. The position is expressed that the absence of the term «amateur sport» in the studied law has objective reasons and is not a disadvantage. In conclusion, the authors state that it is necessary to elaborate the concepts under study and their terminological improvement. Such a measure will allow not only to improve the text of the studied law from the standpoint of legislative technique, but also to clearly formulate the subject of sports law.