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What We Have Learned From Managing Appeals

January 11, 2008 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Fifteen years ago the Centre for Sport and Law began writing appeal policies for sport organizations. In 1995 we published a handbook on the topic (Administrative Appeals – A Handbook for Sport Organizations) and in 2000 we did a second handbook (So You’ve Got a Complaint – The Hearing Process from Start to Finish). Now, [...]

It’s an Olympic Year – What Coaches Need to Know About Selection Disputes

January 8, 2008 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Canada is like many other countries that have, in recent years, created third-party dispute resolution mechanisms to deal with sport-related disputes. The earliest such system was created in the United States in 1978, when the Amateur Sports Act directed certain types of amateur sports disputes to the American Arbitration Association. China introduced provisions for dealing [...]

What is Fair? B.C. Schools Case Fails to Meet the Required Threshold

September 18, 2007 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

We are often asked to help sport organizations administer internal hearings to ensure procedures are carried out properly, thus reducing the chance of a complaint or dispute being appealed or brought to court for judicial review. In this column, we report on a recent case from BC involving school sports that turned on the issue [...]

Maintaining ‘Fairness’ in Investigations and Hearings

October 2, 2006 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Occasionally in this column we are able to write about actual sport cases. This is a treat, as normally we draw from general cases, extracting their principles and interpreting them in the sporting context. In this column, we will write about lessons learned from the 2004 Alberta case, Paterson v. Skate Canada.[1] Internal investigations are [...]

Scope of Review, Standard of Review and Authority to Grant a Remedy: An Analysis of Three Policy-Based Rules in a Sport-Specific Arbitration Process

April 21, 2006 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

The purpose of this paper is to examine how certain prescribed rules of an arbitration process can serve as instruments of sport policy. Three rules of the arbitration process (scope of review of the adjudicator, standard of review to define an error, and the adjudicator’s scope of authority to grant a remedy) are closely examined. [...]

Suspending a Coach Before a Hearing

December 12, 2005 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Unfortunately, there are times when coaches are the subject of serious complaints of misconduct. Most organizations have in place a discipline process for dealing with such complaints (and if they do not have a discipline policy, they certainly should have). Regardless of the type of process, or how well it works, or how efficient the [...]

When Is a Deadline Not a Deadline?

May 9, 2005 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

We have spent the last 15 years urging sport organizations to follow their rules, and at every opportunity doing our best to convey the message that the organization that deviates from their rules does so at their peril. Now, there is a new twist to this subject. Several selection disputes have come forward recently that [...]

Lessons From a Decade of Selection Disputes

December 20, 2002 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Anticipating that there might be some disputes over selection to the Canadian team competing at the Salt Lake City Olympics, the Centre for Sport and Law compiled a background binder of legal cases. We collected and reviewed about 30 cases taken from the courts as well as from private tribunals such as internal appeal panels [...]

The Key Components of a Profession

November 8, 2002 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

This fall we attended a two-day workshop on professional discipline and regulation. Organized for professional associations such as those governing dentists, nurses, architects, accountants and veterinarians, we participated with a view to learning more about how the sport community in general, and the profession of coaching in particular, could improve their disciplinary mechanisms. Although we [...]

Principles Underlying the Adjudication of Selection Disputes Preceding the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games: Notes for Adjudicators

October 10, 2002 • Categories: Procedural Fairness •

Selection disputes inevitably arise prior to any major games such as an Olympics. Prior to the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, some 25 team selection disputes were heard in Canada. In anticipation of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, an ad-hoc arbitration system was put in place in Canada to deal with these disputes. To assist [...]

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