The supposed "neutrality" of the transnational law of sport

Abstract

Sport has reached an economic and social dimension that has led top sports institutions, led by the IOC, to equip themselves with tools to preserve its autonomy. The Olympic Charter aims to achieve this goal through the principle of “political neutrality”, according to which sports leaders often avoid taking a position on thorny “political” issues, which come to concern the protection of the athletes’ fundamental rights, although the same rights appear at least underlying the Charter itself. This work, through a comparative survey that also reflects on the transnational sports law, aims to shed light on the possible contradiction of sports institutions, who struggle to combine the role of sport as a promoter of fundamental rights and social inclusion with the purely sporting (and economic) dimension of the same, which they try to keep away from political conditioning.