Research project Who has influence over how sports is governed, and which interests are represented? In addition to sport governing bodies of a more ‘political’ nature, many of sports’ most important issues are settled by lawyers, in particular those serving on the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The project examines how the CAS wields its power and in who’s interests.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is an arbitration institute that functions as a global “supreme court” for sports. The CAS is the final instance in sporting disputes and establishes interpretations of sports rules that govern sporting activities at all levels worldwide, thus exercising significant power over billions of people and one of the world's largest economic sectors. The project examines the CAS's exercise of power focusing on who can participate and how, how processes are carried out, and which interests are benefited or disadvantaged by its judgments.
The overall purpose of the project is to empirically examine the extent to which the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), as an institution and when exercising judicial power, is legitimate based on a three-part legitimacy concept:
- "Input legitimacy" focusing on who makes decisions in and over CAS, who can provide input and exercise influence over the process, and which interests are thereby represented.
- "Throughput legitimacy" which is mainly about how CAS reasons and uses different legal arguments.
- "Output legitimacy" that focuses on the effects of CAS's activities, in particular which interests and actors are benefited or disadvantaged by the decisions that CAS makes, both in terms of the outcome of individual cases and through the fact that its decisions become governing for all sporting activities and thus have effects for others than the parties involved.
To achieve its aim, the project seeks to answer three research questions:
1. Which actors and which interests exercise influence in and over the CAS?
2. How does the CAS reason?
3. Which interests and actors benefit from the CAS's decision?
The project is based on existing research studying dispute resolution in general and in sports, with a focus on the CAS, in particular. It is based on broad range of social science theories about legitimacy. Based on this, hypotheses are formulated and empirically tested on the CAS’s jurisprudence and on information about the actors in the CAS. The project also uses qualitative analysis of the CAS’s jurisprudence using legal doctrinal methods on the basis of the theoretical framework described above.
By critically examining the CAS’s legitimacy, the project seeks to strengthen good governance in sports. The project also intends to produce more general knowledge about power and the exercise of power in sport.
The project has undergone and passed ethical review (The Swedish Ethical Review Authority, nr 2023-06665-01).
The project builds on the results from an earlier research project, ”The CAS and Its Case Law”, which, among other things, resulted in the book ”The Court of Arbitration for Sport and Its Jurisprudence An Empirical Inquiry into Lex Sportiva” (Springer, 2019).
