07 August 2025
Game, Set, Review
The long-standing tension between private sports arbitration and the EU’s system of fundamental rights came to a head on 1 August 2025, when the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in RFC Seraing v. FIFA. The case addresses whether arbitral awards rendered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport can be insulated from review by EU national courts when EU law is at stake. The judgment represents a restrained but meaningful intervention by the CJEU into the autonomy of sports arbitration, seeking to balance the authority of CAS with the imperative of protective fundamentals rights under EU law. Continue reading >>
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11 July 2025
The Finish Line of Caster Semenya’s Judicial Marathon
Caster Semenya was wronged, and Switzerland – due to the inaction of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (SFSC) – was held responsible by the Grand Chamber (GC) of the ECtHR. This conclusion to a long judicial marathon is an important vindication for an athlete who saw her career destroyed by a process that violated her right to a fair hearing. The case will be remembered as a significant landmark that will affect the field of transnational sports law and governance for years to come. Continue reading >>
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18 February 2025
How the CJEU Should Supervise the Court of Arbitration for Sport
On 16 January 2025, AG Ćapeta rendered her Opinion in the Seraing case which could have profound effects for transnational governance of sports. AG Ćapeta highlights convincingly the specificities of CAS arbitration, its forced nature and peculiar private enforcement system. She concludes that CAS awards should be deprived of res judicata effect and subject to EU law review. I advocate for a less disruptive approach. Instead of a total devaluation of CAS awards, we should condition the recognition of their bindingness to their compliance with European public policy and fundamental due process rights. Continue reading >>20 July 2022
Constitutionalizing the Court of Arbitration for Sport
Claudia Pechstein is an exceptional athlete. On ice, she seems immortal, skating through her 8th Winter Olympics in February 2022 in Beijing. In the court room, she has shown the same determination and refused to back down from a bitter and expensive legal struggle. The most recent decision in Claudia Pechstein's legal odyssey, a decision by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, is interesting beyond the German context because it concerns one of the most active and at the same time under-researched global courts: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Continue reading >>
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06 July 2019
The European Court of Human Rights and FIFA: Current Issues and Potential Challenges
The aim of this post is to address the relevance of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights for FIFA. Continue reading >>
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