CONSTRAINT WITHOUT SUCCESSION: EXTERNAL LEGAL REVIEW AND RETAINED REGULATORY AUTHORITY IN INTERNATIONAL SPORT

Abstract

External courts increasingly alter sporting decisions without assuming responsibility for the consequences that follow. They reopen forums, intensify supervision of compulsory arbitration, confine an award's domestic effects, require individual proportionality, or invalidate unframed federation discretion. Such interventions are often described as transfers of power, yet this description obscures the decisional work that remains after judgment. This article develops a functional account of institutional constraint without succession. Through an examination of Pechstein, Semenya, International Skating Union, Royal Football Club Seraing, FIGC and CONI, and NADA Austria and Others, it asks who is responsible for making the next operative decision, which parts of that decision have been moved elsewhere, and how much legally meaningful choice remains. European Superleague and FIFA v BZ further test this account in circumstances where judicial scrutiny reaches the substance of sports regulation. The cases reveal a decision remainder composed of such matters as rule selection, fact-finding, legal classification, remedy, implementation, and responsibility for renewed illegality. External review may control one of these functions without acquiring the regulatory role as a whole. Institutional succession should therefore be found only where responsibility for completing the next operative decision moves. Between retained autonomy and judicial takeover lies a more common arrangement: the sports body remains the first-order decision-maker, while courts or other supervisory authorities control validity, review intensity, legal effects, remedies, or timing. The inquiry turns on what remains to be decided, by whom, and with how much genuine choice.