Sports Law Arbitration by CAS: is it the Same as International Arbitration?

Abstract

By the early 1980s, a pressing need had emerged to find an ultimate, authoritative and neutral solution to judicial disputes among athletes, international and national sports federations, national Olympic committees, and Olympic and other games organizers. The Olympic Movement decided to create a final and binding court of arbitration for all sports-related disputes, including doping cases.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ("CAS") was established April 6, 1983 at an International Olympic Committee ("IOC") session in New Delhi, and since that time has dealt with sports-specific disputes of a private nature. The court provides a forum for the world's athletes and sports federations to resolve their disputes through a single independent and accomplished sports adjudication body. The court has developed the ability to apply consistently the rules of different sports organizations and the world-wide rules of the Olympic Movement Anti-Doping Code. The CAS is in the course of developing universal principles that will some day be widely recognized as the lex sportiva.

Despite the growth and success of the CAS, some International Federations ("IFs") have not agreed to use it for dispute settlement. The International Amateur Athletic Federation ("IAAF"), at its Athens Congress in 1982, created what it termed the "Arbitration Panel," intended to be the final and binding internal sports court for disputes in athletics. The IAAF Arbitration Panel started its jurisprudential activity in 1985, while the CAS followed suit one year later. By far, the more significant body is the CAS, which has decided twenty-six Olympic cases since 1996 and more than ten times that number of cases outside of the Olympic Games. The IAAF, on the other hand, decided fifteen cases through the end of 1999. At its Congress in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in August 2001, the IAAF passed a resolution adopting the CAS.