Disputes over gender, doping, and eligibility in Olympic sport are widely covered in sport studies and in the mainstream media. Less well known are the functions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and the threat it poses to athletes'' rights by depriving them of access to their own countries'' court systems. CAS is a quasi-court that loosely follows the model of international arbitration tribunals. As in forced arbitration outside of sport, employees - in this case, high performance athletes - sign contracts agreeing to arbitration rather than litigation as the sole means of dispute resolution.
Promoting the concept of sport exceptionalism, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) justifies the power it exercises through CAS by claiming that sport must be self-regulating, with disputes settled by specialist arbitrators. These arguments point to lex sportiva (global sports law) as a valid legal principle in sport-related disputes, which, it is claimed, can
