Court of Arbitration for Sport

What CAS is

The Court of Arbitration for Sport is an arbitral tribunal, not a state court. The idea came from IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch shortly after his election in 1981; a working group chaired by the International Court of Justice judge Kéba Mbaye drafted the first statutes, ratified in 1983 and effective on 30 June 1984. The first case was heard in 1986. Its seat is Lausanne, where it has occupied purpose-built premises at the Palais de Beaulieu since 2022, with a decentralised office in Sydney and alternative hearing centres in Shanghai, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Kuala Lumpur and Lima.^[1] [2]

It is administered by the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS), a Swiss foundation of 22 members, all experienced jurists, appointed in a chain that begins with the international federations, the national Olympic committees and the IOC and ends with four members chosen for their independence from all of them. ICAS appoints the arbitrators, approves the budget and amends the Code of Sports-related Arbitration by two-thirds majority.^[3] [4]

Why ICAS exists — the Gundel ruling

ICAS is the answer to a specific criticism. In 1992 the equestrian rider Elmar Gundel appealed an FEI doping sanction to CAS, won a reduction, and then challenged the award before the Swiss Federal Tribunal on the ground that CAS was not independent. In March 1993 the Tribunal rejected his appeal and recognised CAS as a genuine court of arbitration whose awards are enforceable — but flagged the structural link between CAS and the IOC, which funded it, as a problem if the IOC were ever a party.^[1]

The reform that followed was signed in Paris on 22 June 1994 by the IOC, the summer and winter federation associations and the national Olympic committees. It replaced the IOC as CAS's governing body with ICAS and split CAS into an Ordinary and an Appeals division. The Code of Sports-related Arbitration came into force on 22 November 1994.^[1]

Structure and caseload

CAS has three permanent divisions — Ordinary (first-instance contractual disputes), Appeals (appeals against decisions of sports bodies, the bulk of the work) and the Anti-Doping Division, created for Rio 2016 and PyeongChang 2018 and made permanent in 2019. A separate ad hoc division has sat at every Olympic Games since Atlanta 1996, deciding within 24 hours and free of charge, and has also been convened for the Commonwealth Games, the UEFA European Championship since 2000, the FIFA World Cup since 2006 and the Asian Games since 2014.^{[1] [5] [2]}

Arbitrators must be drawn from a closed list — 467 names from 94 countries on the general list published in August 2026, more than 500 including anti-doping judges and mediators — appointed for renewable four-year terms.^[6] [5]

Volume: 917 procedures were registered in 2024 — 642 appeals, 200 ordinary, 41 anti-doping, 21 ad hoc, 13 mediations — against 957 in 2020, 996 in 2021, 830 in 2022 and 942 in 2023, and more than 12,000 cases in total by the end of 2025. Employment disputes are the largest single subject; football alone accounted for 77% of the 2025 filings.^{[2] [5] [7]}

How a case gets there, and what law applies

CAS jurisdiction rests on consent, almost always given in advance through an arbitration clause in a federation's statutes. FIFA's statutes are typical: they recognise CAS for disputes between FIFA, confederations, clubs, players, officials and agents, exclude appeals about the Laws of the Game and short suspensions, and require appeals within 21 days.^[8]

Two rules do most of the work in the Code itself. Under R47 an appellant must have exhausted the body's internal remedies. Under R49, where the federation's own rules set no limit, the deadline is 21 days from receipt of the decision appealed against — the default that most federations then copy.^[9]

On governing law, a distinction is often garbled. In the ordinary procedure (R45) the parties choose the law, and in the absence of a choice Swiss law applies. In the appeals procedure (R58) the panel applies the federation's own regulations first and, subsidiarily, the law of the country where that federation is domiciled — which is Swiss law in most cases only because most international federations are domiciled in Switzerland.^[9]

Awards are enforceable under the New York Convention; dissenting opinions are not recognised and are not notified. Appeal awards are published unless the parties ask otherwise. A revised Code came into force on 1 July 2025, clarifying expedited ordinary procedures and directing division presidents to weigh expertise, diversity, equality and turnover when appointing panel presidents.^[9] [10]

Where a CAS award can be challenged

For most of CAS's history the answer was: in one place only. A final award may be taken to the Swiss Federal Tribunal within 30 days, on five exclusive grounds — improper constitution of the tribunal, wrongly accepted or declined jurisdiction, deciding beyond or short of the claims, unequal treatment or denial of the right to be heard, and incompatibility with public policy. CAS puts the rate at about 6% of decisions appealed each year; of 39 such appeals in 2024, 24 were dismissed and none reported successful.^[5] [2]

That changed on 1 August 2025. In RFC Seraing v FIFA (Case C-600/23) the Court of Justice of the European Union held that CAS awards touching rules of EU public policy are reviewable by courts in EU member states. The CJEU did not follow its Advocate General's proposal of full review against all EU law, and it recognised sports arbitration as a legitimate mechanism — but the practical result is that CAS awards now face two review channels rather than one.^[11]

Human-rights litigation has run alongside. In Mutu and Pechstein v Switzerland (2 October 2018) the European Court of Human Rights treated acceptance of CAS jurisdiction in disciplinary matters as compulsory arbitration, so Article 6 guarantees apply; it dismissed almost every complaint but found that Pechstein should have been granted the public hearing she requested.^[12]

Semenya v Switzerland — what the Grand Chamber did and did not decide

This case is routinely reported wrongly, so it is worth setting out precisely. Caster Semenya challenged World Athletics' regulations for athletes with differences of sex development. CAS dismissed her claim on 30 April 2019, holding by majority that the regulations were discriminatory but a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of protecting the female category — while flagging three concerns of its own. The Swiss Federal Tribunal declined to set the award aside on 25 August 2020. An ECtHR Chamber found for her on 11 July 2023, by four votes to three.^[13] [14]

The Grand Chamber ruled on 10 July 2025, and its judgment is narrower than the headlines suggested. It found a violation of Article 6 § 1 only, by 15 votes to 2: because CAS jurisdiction had been imposed rather than freely chosen, the Swiss Federal Tribunal owed her a "particularly rigorous examination" and its very restrictive reading of public policy did not deliver one. By 13 votes to 4 it declared the Article 8, 14 and 13 complaints inadmissible for want of Swiss jurisdiction, reversing the Chamber — Semenya is South African, and the regulations were made by a Monegasque association.^[14] [15]

What it did not do matters as much. It did not strike down the DSD regulations, did not find them discriminatory, did not annul the CAS award or the Swiss judgment, did not restore her eligibility, and expressly declined to rule on whether CAS itself is an independent tribunal established by law — a question one judge would have answered in the negative in a separate opinion. The ruling was against Switzerland, not against World Athletics or CAS, and its practical effect is a heavier review duty on the Swiss court.^[14] [15]

Cases worth knowing

• WADA v RUSADA, 17 December 2020 — RUSADA held non-compliant over the Moscow laboratory data. WADA sought four years; the panel imposed two, with Russian athletes able to compete only as neutrals, no flag, no anthem and no hosting rights. This award is why "ROC" rather than Russia appeared at Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022. More on the compliance machinery.^[16]
• Sun Yang — an eight-year ban in February 2020; the Swiss Federal Tribunal removed the panel president in December 2020; an entirely new panel re-heard the case and in June 2021 imposed four years and three months, the bottom of the range for a second violation. A rare instance of a CAS award being unwound on procedure and re-decided.^[17]
• Kamila Valieva, 29 January 2024 — four years' ineligibility from 25 December 2021, with all results disqualified. The panel held that the test for intent is identical for a minor and an adult.^[18]
• IBA v IOC, 2 April 2024 — the International Boxing Association's appeal against the withdrawal of its recognition dismissed; the IOC's right to set the conditions of recognition outweighed the federation's personality rights.^[19]
• Jordan Chiles — the ad hoc division restored the original score in the Paris 2024 floor final, holding the inquiry had been made four seconds late. On 23 January 2026 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court granted revision on the strength of documentary footage discovered afterwards and referred the case back to CAS; no new award had been announced when this page was written. It also rejected a separate challenge to an arbitrator's independence.^[20]
• Russian Luge Federation v FIL, 31 October 2025, and Russian and Belarusian ski associations v FIS, 2 December 2025 — both partly upheld on proportionality: a federation may not refuse to operate a neutral pathway where a less restrictive means exists. See the exclusion page.^[21]