Source: https://www.lawinsport.com/topics/articles/item/does-the-court-of-arbitration-for-sport-need-a-grand-chamber
Timestamp: 2019-06-17 21:35:41
Document Index: 443053944

Matched Legal Cases: ['sui generis', 'sui generis', '§156', '§10', '§11', '§36', '§75', '§11', '§75', '§339', '§11']

Published 15 January 2014 | Authored by: James Segan
A series of CAS Panels from the mid-2000s onwards held that there is a general principle of proportionality, which can be applied by CAS so as to reduce even mandatory fixed sanctions in the WADC if they are disproportionate and thus contrary to overriding principles of law.7 The reasoning in these decisions is painstakingly careful, considering the relevance of general principles of EU law and of wider general principles of law. The CAS Panels emphasised that this proportionality principle could not be invoked lightly and therefore required "...exceptional circumstances" or could only indeed be applied in "...the very rarest of cases".8 Yet the principle clearly exists. By contrast, however, in the high-profile Alberto Contador case, the CAS Panel, when asked to consider reduction of a fixed penalty on proportionality grounds, simply ignored the earlier case law and asserted baldly that because a particular penalty was fixed, "...there is no discretion for the hearing body to reduce the period of ineligibility due to reasons of proportionality".9 Again, therefore, it is simply impossible to know where the law currently stands on this issue.
3. "No significant fault or negligence" in the WADC
In a number of cases, CAS Panels have waxed lyrical about the demanding duty of care expected from athletes and the need for the utmost caution, so that a plea of "...no significant fault or negligence" in Article 10.5.1 of the WADC would require "exceptional circumstances" before it would be allowed.10 In other cases, however, CAS Panels have cautioned against setting the bar "excessively high".11 These two lines of case law are then available for CAS Panels to deploy as they wish in future disputes, depending upon the perceived merits of the case before them one way or the other. Lawyers have no clue which line the Panels will choose: will the bar be set high or will it not?
Such divergences arise at first instance, of course, in any legal system. Courts will often differ in the way they understand the same provision. There is nothing exceptional or unusual in that. But what is unsatisfactory about the divergences in the CAS case law is that they can never be settled definitively. Each CAS Panel can revisit the underlying legal points again and again. And since no CAS Panel outranks or binds another, the debate simply rumbles on indefinitely. If one puts that together with the fact that the text of the vast majority of CAS awards are not even available on the CAS website, and instead have to be garnered by sports lawyers asking each other for much-prized pdfs, one has a recipe for almost endless and expensive legal debate.
This situation must surely change. A "lex ludica" requires some sort of system for resolving the key issues in that body of law definitively. The solution to this problem, and the way to provide a true "Supreme Court of Sport", is for the rules of CAS to be amended so as to provide for a "Grand Chamber". The precise modalities of this would of course be a matter for debate, but the basic idea that I propose would be that when a case is lodged with CAS which raises a point of general importance – the identification of which would be a matter for the President – then the case would be relinquished to a five-arbitrator Grand Chamber for a binding decision on the point. The rules of CAS would also be amended so that future panels were obliged to follow decisions of the Grand Chamber on a point of law unless satisfied that such a ruling was manifestly erroneous.
If this change were made then CAS could begin clearing the dense thickets of conflicting jurisprudence, and resolving the underlying issues definitively. Lawyers would then be able to advise their clients more cheaply, and with greater clarity as to what the relevant law actually is. In the place of a multitude of citations on a particular point, a single authoritative reference could be given. The overall costs of the system would be reduced, and many cases which currently go to a hearing might never get there. That would mean less work for ingenious counsel but it would be a positive development for sport in general.
It could be argued that such a change would increase formality and legal expense. That might be true in the limited number of cases which were relinquished to the Grand Chamber. However the additional costs of two further arbitrators, and any additional administrative costs of operating the new system, could be absorbed into the overall cost of CAS arbitration without much of an effect. Moreover, there can be little doubt that the overall effect of the change would be to reduce the legal costs inherent in the CAS system. CAS has made great strides in this direction over the years, but the truth of the matter is that the complexity of its case law renders many disputes far from "inexpensive".
It could further be argued that such a change would reduce the flexibility inherent in an arbitral system. But in a conventional arbitration, there will be an applicable law (or laws) governing the whole dispute, and the arbitral panel will be directed to decisions of the courts of the relevant country (or countries), including Supreme Courts, which settle the law which is to be applied. In a CAS arbitration, by contrast, much of the law which a Panel is required to apply is sui generis12. The flexibility to keep re-hearing debates as to what the content of that sui generis law actually is should not, in my view, be prized by any sensible litigant.
The only way to prevent this situation from continuing is to provide a much-needed element of finality. The introduction of a "Grand Chamber" solution would achieve this.
1. AEK Athens v UEFA (CAS 98/200) (§156).
2. The principle that where there are differences between the law in force at the time of an alleged offence and the law as it exists at the time of final judgment, the accused is entitled to have the most favourable law applied to him.
3. I.e. a system of dispute resolution which does not involve, at least at the first stage, Courts of law but instead an arbitral tribunal whose jurisdiction is derived from the agreement of the parties.
4. Oliveira v USADA (CAS 2010/A/2107); Lapikov v IWF (CAS 2011/A/2677); Qerimaj v IWF (CAS 2012/A/2822).
5. Foggo v NRL (CAS A2/2011); ITF v Kutrovsky (CAS 2012/A/2804)
6. UKAD v Llewellyn (14 February 2013).
7. Squizzato v FINA (CAS 2005/A/830) at §§10.19-10.26; Puerta v ITF (CAS 2006/A/1025) at §§11.7.1-11.7.34; FINA v Mellouli (CAS 2007/A/1252) at §§36-40; Lapikov (cited above) at §75.
8. Puerta (cited above) at §11.7.27); Lapikov (cited above) at §75.
9. UCI v Alberto Contador (CAS 2011/A/2384) at §339.
10. See e.g. IRB v Keyter (CAS 2006/A/1067); WADA v Stauber (CAS 2006/A/1133); WADA v CISM & Turrini (CAS 2008/A/1565).
11. Puerta, cited above, at §11.7.1 and the further cases there cited.
12. Of its own kind, i.e. specific to the system of law administered by CAS.