The Rule of Law and Sporting Justice ((2007) 2 ANZSLJ 1, Paul Hayes)

Articles17th December 2007

This article originally appeared in the 2007 edition of the Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Journal.

“Over the past two decades, the international sporting community has witnessed an extraordinary growth in both the number and scope of sporting disputes occurring between sports organisations and individuals. Adjudicating over the majority of international and national sporting disputes has been the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which was created by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1984, in accordance with the domestic law of Switzerland. Illustrative of the growth of these disputes and the jurisdiction of the CAS, the CAS’s published statistics reveal that in the eleven years between 1984 and 1995 it decided a mere 50 cases. However, from 1996 (which at the time was the CAS’s busiest year in terms of the number of cases determined), the caseload increased significantly. Over the next eleven years from 1996 to 2006, the CAS decided 655 cases…”