ABSTRACT
How sport should be governed and regulated is a major topic of debate at present. This chapter presents a framework of analysis for this debate. There have been three streams of academic discussion flowing into it but with little evidence of intermingling. There has been an internal debate within sports law. This has considered the desirability of legal intervention, often posed as the question 'should the law stop at the touchline?' 1 One side of the debate presents non-intervention as an immunity from or exception to the ordinary law of the land; it argues that sport is different and that courts should recognize the difference. Legal intervention disrupts the good administration of sport. This position says that sport has its own 'internal constitutionalism' and operates a sporting 'rule of law'. It therefore already has a parallel legal system and this justifies its sporting autonomy. In this discussion legal intervention usually means judicial intervention,2 but may include legislative intervention. The limitation of this debate in sports law is that it rarely progresses beyond a crude dichotomy between private internal autonomy and public external accountability.
