Sports and Games

The goal of this course is to explore normative and adjudicative systems associated with sports and games; to consider how those systems both cast light on legal rules and practices and reflect the governing assumptions of their particular sports or games. Three jurisprudential topics, with subtopics, are considered in the course. The first is the “fundamentals” of a sport or game, such as how one defines a “sport” and a “game,” the “essence” of a sport, and what makes a sport “good” (attractive to participants and fans). The second is officiating: what constitutes the “discretion” of officials to interpret and enforce rules, what are the shortcomings of officials, and to what extent supplemental devices, such as instant replay in several sports or the use of virtual assistant review in soccer, may be used and are effective. The third is sportsmanship: to what extent the rules of a game or sport may intentionally be broken, whether it is appropriate to deceive officials, and whether the participants in a game or sport are responsible for putting forth maximum effort to “win,” as opposed to deliberately relinquishing their advantage. The governing idea, in introducing these topics, is that the process of establishing rules for a sport or game, interpreting and enforcing those rules, and determining the extent to which the rules may be intentionally or unintentionally violated, can give us a deeper understanding of how legal rules and practices operate in a setting that may be congenial to many law students and about which many students may feel they are “experienced,” having participated or followed closely individual sports or games.