The Delicate Balance: Defining the Remit of National Sport Tribunals

The relationship between national sport tribunals and governing bodies (both domestic and international), represents one of the most complex challenges in modern sport governance. As disputes in sport become increasingly legalised and stakes continue to rise, establishing clear boundaries for tribunal jurisdiction is fundamental to preserving the integrity of both the legal system and sport itself.

National sport tribunals serve a crucial function in the sport ecosystem. They provide accessible, specialised dispute resolution that understands the unique pressures, timelines, and culture of competitive sport. Unlike general courts, these tribunals can deliver decisions quickly enough to matter, before the end of a season and/or before an athlete's short bout of peak performance or the athlete's career altogether, ends.

In other words, sport tribunals are essential in order to focus and pronounce decisions on areas where legal principles intersect with sporting contexts that require adjudication, but not technical sporting expertise, in a much more expeditious manner than courts of law would.

For instance, procedural fairness and natural justice form the bedrock of tribunal jurisdiction. When a federation fails to follow its own rules, denies an athlete the right to be heard, or conducts proceedings riddled with bias, tribunals provide essential oversight. These are legal standards applied to sporting context. While sport organisations are, in their majority, not equipped to apply such legal standards, this is precisely what tribunals do best.

Discrimination and human rights issues clearly also fall within tribunal competence. When athletes allege discrimination based on protected characteristics, these aren't sporting judgments but fundamental rights questions that demand independent adjudication. Other aspects relating to employment of athletes, in particular, breaches of contract, may also fall within the jurisdiction and competence of sport tribunals.

However, while tribunals are there to protect athletes and other sport persons, the boundary line to sustain the principle of sport autonomy should be upheld at all times. There is a very fine line between the protection which needs to be afforded to athletes and other sport persons and instances where tribunals should consciously restrain themselves, recognising that some decisions should simply not be subjected to legal review. This is where the principle of sporting autonomy becomes paramount.

First and foremost, technical and tactical decisions represent the clearest no-go for sport tribunals. Team or national selection, playing strategies, training methods and coaching decisions, are matters of sporting judgment. A tribunal reviewing such technical and tactical decisions, isn't administering justice. The same applies to referee decisions during competition. While rules about appointing referees might be reviewable, the judgment calls made during play must remain the decisions of the referee and other assisting officials.

Rules of the game (rule making for any sport) should also remain solely the discretion and remit of international governing bodies. These are questions of sporting policy that shape the nature of competition itself. Federations and international bodies have developed these rules through years of experience and understanding of the evolution of the specific sport and no tribunal could first and foremost be competent enough to review such decisions, nor should it be the case that jurisdiction be afforded, unless a rule is applied discriminatorily or violates fundamental rights.

An exception to the rule still exists and tribunals can still review and pronounce decisions on rules that create unreasonable barriers to participation or that serve no legitimate sporting purpose, even if they're sporting rules, if such do not serve a genuine sporting objective or are considered as arbitrary, discriminatory, or disproportionate.

Likewise, rankings, ratings, and sporting merit assessments should never be a matter to be challenged in a tribunal. No one, more than the federations themselves, have the expertise to rank, rate and assess athletes and players. These require deep sporting knowledge and involve inevitable subjectivity that's inherent to sport, not a flaw to be corrected by legal intervention. The same principle would apply in these circumstances and therefore, if ranking / rating / assessment rules are not applied in a just manner, the application of the rules itself may be examined by the tribunal.

Matters get more complicated when one considers the navigating through multiple layers required due to the international dimension of sport. When international federations enter into the picture of a specific case, national tribunals should be extremely cautious about interpreting or applying international rules differently than intended, as this fragments the global sporting landscape. When international federations create rules on whichever level (whether it's competition rules, eligibility criteria or others), they are creating level playing fields across borders. To this effect, national tribunals reviewing individual cases should implement these rules rather than reinterpret them.

This does not mean that when such rules create discrimination or it is evident that these are made in bad faith, for improper purposes, or without any reasonable basis, they cannot be challenged. The tribunal should base its efforts solely on procedural review and therefore, ask itself whether the decision under review was made through a fair process, by appropriate decision-makers, following applicable rules, free from bias and free improper influence and therefore, whether the principles of good governance, more specifically the principle of accountability, had been applied.

All that being said, one must keep in mind that many international federations also have their own internal mechanisms, with CAS serving as the final arbiter and therefore, national tribunals serve best as intermediate bodies that ensure domestic proceedings meet basic fairness standards while feeding appropriately into international structures.

This doesn't mean that national tribunals are spineless. They are there to ensure that international rules are applied fairly and consistently at the national level and that national federations don't hide behind the international federation's rules to avoid accountability. However, adjudicators should steer clear of the idea of disputing or reinterpreting international sporting policies and when they do, striking a balance between excessive oversight impinging on sport autonomy and giving sport autonomy a blank cheque, should always be kept as a priority.

Malta is in the process of having its first sport tribunal. We shall look forward to the publication of the legislation and its implementation through the creation of the first ever Maltese sport tribunal.

April, 2026