ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as an introduction to key legal issues that may affect or impact upon people working in the sport and leisure industries. Inevitably for such a broad discipline, the chapter only provides an insight into selected areas and if readers want further information there are references provided to signpost where that additional information may be found. Many of these references are to cases – case law is very important for setting precedents. By its very nature, the law is different in different countries, so this chapter concentrates on the way the law operates in England and Wales, for consistency (Fafinski and Finch, 2007; Elliott and Quinn, 2007). However, many of the principles demonstrated will be valid in other countries’ legal systems – but they will be enacted by different legislation, different processes and the legal details will be different. In order to locate the case law and legislation cited in this chapter, it is necessary to become familiar with searching the major legal databases. There is a vast quantity of legal material (case reports, journal articles, statutes, etc.) available online. However, most of these are only available to organisations and libraries that pay the appropriate subscription fee. It is highly likely that most universities will have access to at least some of these databases and you should contact librarians for more details and instructions on how to use these databases. There are three main commercial databases – these are Westlaw, Lexis Nexis and Lawtel. For ease of use, Westlaw is probably the most user-friendly. It has a clear, stripped down Google-like interface, with a whole battery of features available beyond the initial search. It also enables the user to search using a variety of terminology and in a variety of different ways.
