SMNR: Sports and Law

Course Information

Registration Information

Meeting Times

Day Time Location
TUE 3:30 - 5:20 pm JON 6.203

Evaluation Method

Type Date Time Location
Paper

Description

As formal rule-governed practices, sports and law often pursue similar goals and confront many of the same challenges. For example, each domain must decide: to what extent to guide conduct by formal as opposed to informal norms, and, if the former, by rules or by standards; when to delegate discretion to the adjudicators (judges, juries, referees), and how best to constrain it; how, if at all, to provide for appellate review; how to conceptualize, deter, and sanction "cheating"; how to identify and rectify gaps between "the law in the books" and "the law in action"; etc. This novel seminar, taught for the first time in spring 2008, will investigate these and other respects in which sports and law face similar dynamics and problematics. The hope is that the comparison will prove illuminating, that particular solutions and approaches adopted by organized sports can teach lessons for how the law can more satisfactorily resolve some of its challenges, and vice versa. As this description should suggest, the seminar has nothing to do with "sports law," which concerns the regulation of sports by law. Rather, it sits at the intersection of sport theory and legal theory.

Instructors

Headshot of Berman, Mitchell N. Berman, Mitchell N.
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