Sports and Games

This course explores normative and adjudicative systems associated with sports and games. Apart from their intrinsic interest, these topics cast light on legal rules and practices. Confirming as much, sports, games, and the law are often compared, such as when Chief Justice John G. Roberts famously—or infamously—likened Supreme Court justices to umpires. Consider just a few additional questions that have attracted judicial and scholarly attention. (1) Should referees issue “makeup calls” or “swallow the whistle” in crunch time? (2) Is competitive hotdog eating a sport, a game, or neither? (3) Was Justice Antonin Scalia correct to assert, in a judicial opinion, that “it is the very nature of a game to have no object except amusement”? (4) Do the rules of sports evolve in a manner akin to the common law? (5) Has the use of Video Assistant Referees changed the rules of soccer? Readings will be drawn primarily from Berman and Friedman, The Jurisprudence of Sport: Sports and Games as Legal Systems (2021).