The Court of Arbitration for Sport : a critical analysis of five selected judgments in the context of the world of football

Abstract

Disputes related to sports have increased a lot throughout these past years. This is evidently a result of the development which sport has made. When analysing football, which is widely considered as the world’s most popular sport, it is clear that the present level of competition cannot be compared to that of a few decades ago. Nowadays many footballers would do anything to gain minimal advantages. Since its creation, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has been considered as the Supreme Court governing world sports. In fact since 2002, in context of the world of football, such arbitrary body has awarded very important rulings that are widely deemed as landmark judgments and has also been vital in the development of a Lex Sportiva. The scope of this term paper is to analyse the five most popular areas of interest related to football vis-à-vis the Court of Arbitration of Sport. These five chapters shall carefully analyse the topics of Contractual Disputes, Match-Fixing, Doping, the Football Transfer System and the Protection of Minors in the world of football. This analysis shall be complemented with both references to more recent case law in order to determine a studied prediction of how this arbitrary body will eventually rule and proposals of what can be done in order to have more fair awards in the future. Throughout the whole study, the author will study exactly how panels tackle procedural and substantial issues arising from these topics. Last but not least in the last chapter, some limitations of this arbitrary body will be highlighted in order to discuss whether the Court of Arbitration for Sport is indeed a Supreme Court or not.