Dr. of Law, Professor A.A. Solovyev^{1, 2, 3}
Dr. of Law, Professor I.V. Ponkin⁴
Dr. of Law, Professor V.V. Grebennikov^5
1Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region, Moscow
²Kutafin Moscow State University of Law (MSAL), Moscow
³Moscow State Pedagogical University (MSPU), Moscow
⁴Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow
⁵Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Moscow

Keywords: sport, sport law, sport legislation, lex sportiva, regulation, traditional extra-legislative sport regulation system, sport legislation codification.

Background. Recent events that were so detrimental for the Russian sports including the mass doping cases revealed in the Russian Track and Field Sports Federation in 2015; followed by the meldonium abuse scandals and associated with multiple cases of blatant and unpunished biased refereeing of our athletes abroad; plus other serious cases of corruption and crime in the Russian sport system; and many other commonly known albeit long unresolved problems of the national sports and their diseases – clearly demonstrate that due reforms are critically needed to radically homologate the policies and practices of the national sport sector based on a complex and harmonically designed provisions of the valid legislation and the independent extra-legislative sport regulation system.

Objective of the study was to underline the urgent need for the valid sport legislation being codified by the Russian Sport Federation to facilitate homologation (i.e. improvement with its key characteristics being put in compliance with the relevant standards and requirements) of the national extra-legislative sport regulation system (with its definition provided herein).

Study results and discussion. The study team applied methods of system analysis, legislative framework scrutiny and synthesis to consider the ways of the sport legislation codification mechanism as a precursor (derived from the Latin praecursor – predecessor) for an improved sport regulation system (order).

Key provisions

We apply herein the term homologation that refers to the improvement of an object or process with its key characteristics being put in compliance with the relevant standards and requirements – as we believe it well describes the process needs to be initiated in the national sports sector.

The notion of order is also highly important for the newly designed legal doctrine of the sport sector [5] as referring to the degree of regulation and negative entropy in the sector.

Negative entropy means the feature of a complicated system opposite to entropy (viewed as chaos, self-destruction, disintegration) descriptive of the system progress towards self-integration and ordering and, hence, referring to the degree of order in the system [1, p. 5].

The notion of order may be further defined as the “conventionally (conditionally) presumed, designed and/or actually existing substantive (i.e. independently existing and having the relevant features including negative entropy), artificially created and/or supported spatial, temporal, operational, logical, syntactical and/or morphological topology (scheme, matrix) of some set of objects having certain invariance with relatively stable interrelations and conditions (including the harmonic ones)” [1, p. 5].

The valid sport legislative framework determines the content of the legislative order. The notion of extra-legislative sports regulation system is interpreted as the “complex of fundamental relationships (tenets) in the sports sector operated by substantive, self-dependent and self-managing subjects of sport relationships, with the complex being independent of the public government system and international governmental organisations, resistant to an interference from outside, decentralised, correlated, systemic and determined by the specific nature and content of the sport-specific system of relationship. The complex will be based on the fundamental design, operation and reproduction tenets of non-governmental/ non-municipal sport management system(s) and the construction logics of an extra-legislative sport regulation system driven by the pivotal principles and values of the commonly accepted sport ethics” [2, p. 87]. This definition refers to the fairly complex phenomenon and its multisided interrelations with the public order [3] that may imply even a certain degree of competition [7, p. 7].

As stated by Francois Alaphilippe, “the regulatory tissue of sports is always restricted by the frame of the sporting order and governmental order; with the balance of both varying depending on the specific country and political regime” [6, p. 506]. Therefore, the regulatory order (independent extra-legislative sport regulation system) in sports may be duly improved on a fundamental level within the preset parameters; i.e. the regulatory system will be homologated starting from (and finishing by) homologation of the valid sport legislation on the whole, with the homologation process controlled by the sport institutions on their own within their relevant regulatory lex sportiva domains.

As things now stand, the traditional policies and procedures to correct the Russian sport legislation (in a patchwork manner i.e. by improving one block with sacrifice in the other) are no more effective; and it is clear that the most critical sector problems that have been unsolved for the last decades cannot be solved by spasmodic or even segment-wise actions as demonstrated by the practical experience. Illusions as to the government ability to control the sport sector are more and more diminished, and the sport sector resistance to the governmental control efforts tends to grow.

It is the codification that may provide a set of dependable tools for the large-scale homologation of the relevant legislative domains and integrated regulation of the sector; and we believe that it is the most promising way for the national sport legislation revision initiative.

The sport legislation codification process may be defined as the legal framework systemisation (via a creative legislative process) designed to put in order the legal and regulatory provisions in some sector of public relationship normally executed by the relevant legislative governmental agency by purposeful design, management and redistribution actions on the disordered and non-systemic (or insufficiently systemic) integrity of the relevant regulatory provisions and legal standards regulating the relevant sector of public relationship in the relevant period. The agency must put in system the legal provisions and standards by comprenation (that means an internal integration, assembling), revision (transformation) and completion (to bridge the legislative gaps, remove internal contradictions etc.) using additional legal and regulatory material when necessary. The outdated segments and elements of the legislative and regulatory framework must be screened out, deposited (as a legal “sediment”), renovated and/or replaced, followed by regrouping and systemic integration of the resultant system using the relevant multilevel and complexly designed functional, logical, syntactical and morphological model (scheme, matrix). The system redesign must be legalised by a single, logically structured, balanced and systemic legal act (code) that should replace (within the relevant legislative sector, subsector, institutional or regulatory field) a significant portion of the existing legal and regulatory framework with the relevant sector-forming (or institution-forming) functionality. We believe that today in its legislative policies the government must give a top priority to the Russian sport legislation codification followed by a Russian Sports Code being developed and implemented to provide a basis for a systemic, inclusive, logically structured regulation of relationships in the sports sector for the reason that the valid sport legislation of the Russian Federation is not relevant any more in the context of the new content and specifics of the sporting and associating relationships – and is not compliant to the requirements of the crisis control policies and requirements of the Russian sports intensive development concepts and policies [4, pp. 32–33, 40–41].

Conclusion. The sport legislation codification (viewed as a vehicle for the homologation of the sport regulation system) may largely scale down the pressing issues in the national sport sector, contribute to the dignity of the Russian sports and improve their image worldwide.

References

1. Ponkin I.V. K voprosu o soderzhanii ponyatiya «poryadok» [The "order" concept interpretation]. Nravstvennye imperativy v prave, 2015, no. 4, pp. 3–5.
2. Ponkina A.I. Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie i avtonomnaya institualizatsiya v oblasti sporta [Public administration and autonomous institutionalization in the field of sport]. Sport Law Com. As. Lawyers Russia; Nat. Association Sport Lawyers of the Russian Federation. Moscow, 2013, 143 p., P. 87.
3. Ponkina A.I., Ponkin I.V. K voprosu o ponyatii i osobennostyakh avtonomnogo vnepravovogo normativnogo poryadka v oblasti sporta [The concept and features of autonomous extra-legal normative order in the field of sports]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Ser. «Yuridicheskie nauki», 2016, no. 1, pp. 28–34.
4. Solovyev A.A. Rossiyskiy i zarubezhny opyt sistematizatsii zakonodatelstva o sporte [Russian and foreign experience of systematization of sports legislation]. Commission on Sport Law of the Association of Lawyers of Russia. Moscow, 2011, 383 p.
5. Alaphilippe F. Ligitimitй et ligaliti des structures intemationales du sport: une toile de fond. Sport, Le troisisme millinaire. Sainte-Foy: Presses Universit Laval, 1991, 809 p., pp. 505–514.
6. Boudot M. Le sport et la doctrine juridique savante. Les Cahiers de droit du sport, 2008, no. 13.
7. Ponkin I., Ponkina A. Limits of State Intervention and Non-Intervention in the Sports Field. Kutafin University Law Review. 2014. no. 1, pp. 92-105.
8. Shevchenko O. On development of legal doctrine in the field of sport. Teoriya i Praktika Fizicheskoy Kultury, 2014 no. 6, pp. 32-34.

Corresponding author: sportlaw2014@rambler.ru

Abstract

The article considers the sport legislation codification project viewed as an effective tool to counter many negative trends in the national sports due to the deficiencies of the valid sport legislation and drawbacks of the existing sport self-regulation system. The article gives grounds for the urgent and significant homologation (i.e. improvement of an object or process with its key characteristics being put in compliance with the relevant standards/ requirements, with the path to the compliance being specified) of the Russian sport legislation via its codification; with a special emphasis on homologation of the national traditional extra-legislative sport regulatory system. We believe that the proposed initiatives are highly necessary for the progress of the national sports. A top priority in the newly designed legal doctrine for the sport sector must be given to the notion of traditional regulatory system as identifying the degree of regulation versus negative entropy in the subject sector. The illusions as to the government ability to control the sport sector are more and more diminished, and the sport sector resistance to the governmental control efforts tends to grow. It is the codification that may provide a set of dependable tools for the large-scale homologation of the relevant legislative domain and integrated regulation of the sector. The study gives definitions of a few notions including sport regulatory system (order), traditional extra-legislative sport regulation system, and sport legislation codification. It is noted that sport legislation codification (viewed as a vehicle for the homologation of the sport regulation system) may largely scale down the pressing issues in the national sport sector, contribute to the dignity of the Russian sports and improve their image worldwide.