Sports arbitration

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS; French: TAS - Tribunal Arbitral du Sport) has headquarters  in Lausanne and its courts are located in New York, Sydney and Lausanne. Temporary (ad hoc ) courts are built in current Olympic Host Cities. Court was established as part of the IOC ( International Olympic Committee ) in 1984. In 1994 a case decided by the CAS was appealed to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, challenging CAS impartiality. The Swiss court ruled that the CAS was a true court of arbitration, but drew attention to the numerous links which existed between the CAS and the IOC. In response, the CAS underwent reforms to make itself more independent of the IOC, organizationally and financially. The biggest change resulting from this reform was the creation of an "International Council of Arbitration for Sport" (ICAS) to look after the running and financing of the CAS, thereby taking the place of the IOC. Generally speaking, a dispute may be submitted to the CAS only if there is an arbitration agreement between the parties which specifies recourse to the CAS. Most of the national and international sports federations recognize its jurisdiction.

The 1994 reform

In February 1992, a horse rider named Elmar Gundel lodged an appeal for arbitration with the CAS on the basis of the arbitration clause in the FEI statutes, challenging a decision pronounced by the federation. This decision, which followed a horse doping case, disqualified the rider, and imposed a suspension and fine upon him. The award rendered by the CAS on 15 October 1992 found partly in favour of the rider (the suspension was reduced from three months to one month: see arbitration CAS 92/63 G. v/ FEI in Digest of CAS Awards 1986-1998). Unhappy with the CAS decision, Elmar Gundel filed a public law appeal with the Swiss Federal Tribunal. The appellant primarily disputed the validity of the award, which he claimed was rendered by a court which did not meet the conditions of impartiality and independence needed to be considered as a proper arbitration court. 

In its judgement of 15 March 1993  the Federal Tribunal (FT) recognised the CAS as a true court of arbitration. The supreme court noted, inter alia, that the CAS was not an organ of the FEI, that it did not receive instructions from this federation and retained sufficient personal autonomy. However, in its judgement the FT drew attention to the numerous links which existed between the CAS and the IOC: the fact that the CAS was financed almost exclusively by the IOC; the fact that the IOC was competent to modify the CAS Statute; and the considerable power given to the IOC and its President to appoint the members of the CAS.

This Gundel judgement led to a major reform of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. First of all, the CAS Statute and Regulations were completely revised to make them more efficient and to modify the structure of the institution, to make it definitively independent of the IOC which had sponsored it since its creation. The biggest change resulting from this reform was the creation of an “International Council of Arbitration for Sport” (ICAS) to look after the running and financing of the CAS, thereby taking the place of the IOC. 

 

Other major changes included the creation of two arbitration divisions (Ordinary Arbitration Division and Appeals Arbitration Division) in order to make a clear distinction between disputes of sole instance and those arising from a decision taken by a sports body. Finally, the CAS reforms were definitively enshrined in a "Code of Sports-related Arbitration", which came into force on 22 November 1994 and was revised on 1 January 2004.

It was not until 27 May 2003 that the Federal Tribunal assessed the Court's independence again, having heard an appeal by two Russian cross-country skiers, Larissa Lazutina and Olga Danilova, against a CAS award disqualifying them from an event at the Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. In a remarkably detailed and exhaustive judgement, the Federal Tribunal dissected the current organisation and structure of the ICAS and CAS, concluding that the CAS was not "the vassal of the IOC" and was sufficiently independent of it, as it was of all other parties that called upon its services, for decisions it made in cases involving the IOC to be considered as true awards, comparable to the judgements of a State tribunal.

Source: http://wikipedia.org/, http://www.tas-cas.org/