International Sports Federations (ISFs) occupy a structurally unique position in the global governance landscape: private associations incorporated under Swiss civil law that simultaneously exercise binding transnational regulatory authority over their respective sports domains. While Swiss association law is the dominant legal form across the Olympic Movement, this sample is intentionally jurisdictionally diverse, spanning Swiss, German, British, and Malaysian entities. Since each of these jurisdictions is party to UNCAC, the UNODC benchmark applies consistently across the sample irrespective of where each federation is headquarted. Although the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (United Nations 2004) and a comprehensive suite of UNODC guidance instruments have established precise standards for private organisations, no systematic empirical study has evaluated the extent to which ISF anti-corruption frameworks reflect these standards. This study addresses that gap through a researcher-led normative document benchmarking study of six summer Olympic ISFs, selected across three governance tiers identified by the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) governance assessment. Employing a 41-question, four-point scoring instrument derived directly from five UNODC source documents, the study evaluates each ISF’s publicly available governance instruments against eight dimensions: leadership commitment, risk assessment, prohibited conduct scope, financial integrity, conflict of interest management, reporting mechanisms, training and education, and enforcement architecture. The findings reveal a structural pattern of partial alignment: ISFs demonstrate reasonable policy coverage at the level of normative commitments but systematic deficiency at the operational and oversight levels. Most critically, all six federations exhibit a significant deficit of internal financial crime controls. This absence encompasses gaps in corruption risk assessment, post-employment restrictions, and the structural independence of investigatory functions. The study concludes with a typology of governance archetypes observable across the cohort and targeted policy recommendations grounded in the UNODC normative architecture.
Banff National Park is the largest park in Canada, and one of the nation’s, and the world’s, premiere destinations for rock climbing. Climbing and mountaineering are advertised on the park’s information page, and there are over one thousand established climbing routes in Banff. However, the legislation governing national parks in Canada does not expressly permit, nor contemplate, rock climbing as an approved activity for park visitors. The nature of climbing, particularly sport climbing where permanent bolts and safety anchors are installed into cliff faces, inherently disturbs cliffside ecosystems, contravening one of the primary purposes of Canadian parks legislation to protect the environment. Without a dedicated management plan or inclusion in legislation, climbers risk possible sanctions or prosecution if enforcement authorities interpret the legislation as prohibiting climbing. In this paper, we analyze the existing statutes and regulations to determine the legal status of climbing in national parks. We also turn to existing case law to determine likely outcomes of potential prosecutions relating to climbing within national parks. We find that the current status of climbing is precarious, and a reworking of management plans is overdue to provide certainty and consistency to climbers and parks enforcement authorities alike.
Illegal broadcasting of live sports content has been a challenge that remains unresolved. Considering the dynamic nature of such unlawful activities, tackling illegal sports broadcasting in a timely and effective manner is of utmost importance for IP enforcement on the Internet. In addition to its adverse effects on the sports industry, these illicit activities undermine various interests, including viewers’ data integrity and cybersecurity. Therefore, the Turkish legislator has been pressured to utilise novel means to combat illegal broadcasting. Consequently, and in an original fashion, the Turkish Football Federation was directly empowered to render decisions concerning the blocking of websites allegedly engaged in piracy. This progressive legislation, bypassing traditional and ineffective mechanisms, aimed to provide immediate measures against illegal football broadcasting on the Internet. This mechanism received several criticisms from scholars. In line with these criticisms, the provision establishing this mechanism has been annulled by the Turkish Constitutional Court in a judgment rendered in June 2025 and effective as of July 2026. This article begins by examining the inherently unique nature of football broadcasting with particular emphasis on its financial significance. Following this, traditional content removal and access blocking mechanisms foreseen in Turkish law are analysed. Subsequently, first, a critical analysis of this original mechanism and the rationale behind the Turkish Constitutional Court’s judgment is assessed. Informed by comparative law, the final section of the article proposes alternatives and constitutionally compliant mechanisms for the Turkish authorities’ efforts to combat online sports piracy.
This article argues for a renewed focus on athletes’ attitudes towards legal and banned performance enhancing substances, considering the dual roles of law and science in shaping these attitudes. The article begins by setting out how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) determines which substances are banned, before considering the so-called grey areas of the law which open the door for athlete moral and sporting opinions to determine how they act in relation to these substances. The research employs a qualitative methodology using structured content analysis, focusing its scope specifically on the sport of athletics. It is underpinned by a range of legal theories on international law and regulatory science. The article ultimately argues that, despite WADA’s efforts to gain and maintain epistemic control over the Prohibited Substances list and the line between clean and dirty in anti-doping, there is an inherent subjectivity to the laws which creates the opportunity for athlete agency to fit individual perceptions of morality into a malleable legal system. It concludes that anti-doping organisations may be able to regain control over this subjective system in individual sports by taking a more proactive approach to promoting legal performance enhancing substances/supplements, reducing the opportunity for athletes to use their agency but risk their careers by taking uninformed decisions in pursuit of improved performance.
This paper aims to revisit the question of the independence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Its main argument is that the CAS plays a key accountability function in the context of transnational sports governance which requires that it be strictly separated from the executive and legislative powers of the Sports Governing Bodies (SGBs) of the Olympic Movement. Yet, when assessing the independence of the CAS, European courts (the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, the German Bundesgerichtshof and the European Court of Human Rights) have failed to seriously consider the implications of this accountability function in their assessment. They have adopted an arbitral lens instead of a judicial one. The article advocates for shifting the lens used to assess the independence of the CAS and suggests building instead on the existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union on the independence of national courts. This leads to the conclusion that the current institutional structure of the CAS is characterised by a relation of dependence vis-à-vis the SGBs of the Olympic Movement, which jeopardises its ability to act as an independent check on the transnational governance of international sports. The paper concludes by offering some concrete reform proposals aimed at cutting this Gordian knot and at ensuring that the CAS can trustfully discharge its responsibility as the independent global judiciary of the lex sportiva.
