Sports Arbitration and Other News, Links and Posts

A proposal was made by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in February this year on a comprehensive sports legislation in India to be known as the National Sports Development Act. The proposal was accompanied by a Preliminary Exposure Draft which contained the proposed statute. Some features of the proposed statute as it relates to arbitration are below:

• Every national federation is to be responsible for agreeing to the institution of an autonomous and impartial mechanism of arbitration and mediation through Sports Ombudsman to handle athletes’ grievances as well as other sports-related disputes between the National Sports Federation and other stakeholders
• The National Olympic Committee of India (known as the Indian Olympic Association) is to agree to facilitate through arbitration, conciliation and mediation mechanism, the resolution of conflicts or disputes within its own management or within the management of any National Sports Federation, which comes under its purview within fifteen days from the date of making such representation;
• A National Sports Ombudsman is to be appointed for resolving disputes relating to sports. The body shall be responsible to resolve all kinds of disputes pertaining to sports (The scheme of appointment of the said body is contained in the IX Schedule of  the Preliminary Exposure Draft).
• Appeals from the Ombudsman would be to an appellate authority.
• The awards of the Ombudsman and the Appellate Authority would be final and binding as per the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.
• Each sports federation is to have exhaustive provisions pertaining to arbitration in their written constitutions.
• One or more retired High Court judges with knowledge of sports law and international/ domestic arbitration would be appointed as the Ombudsman

Other Links:

The latest volume of Virginia Law Review has a post on the need for clarity in subject matter Jurisdiction. Access it from here.

Lewis and Clark Law Review has an article on the resilience of the ground of manifest disregard for setting aside arbitral awards.

The Arbitrajul in litigiile comerciale. Blog has a post informing about call for papers by the the University of Missouri School of Law on the topic “Border Skirmishes: The Intersection Between Litigation and International Commercial Arbitration”. The last date of submission is in August 2011. See here for details.

The Lex Arbitri Blog has a call for papers on for an edited book on arbitration. details are here.

 

UNCTAD has published its annual review on investor-state dispute settlement cases. Access it from here.

 

Indian Legal Space Blog has a post on the Penn Racquet case where the scope of public policy in the enforcement of foreign awards is discussed. We had earlier posted a descriptive comment on the case.

 

Check out the post in the Kluwer Arbitration Blog on appeals from arbital awards in Switzerland.