The current issue of the journal ‘SpuRt – Zeitschrift für Sport und Recht’ (issue 1/2026, p. 12 ff.) features an article by Prof. Cherkeh and Constantin Heyn entitled
‘Doping arbitration agreements before the CAS in light of the right to justice and effective legal protection in the Union’
In the practice of sports arbitration, the validity of the arbitration agreement plays a central role as a conditio sine qua non for the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunals. Against this background, there is an urgent need to answer various questions concerning the procedural law of the CAS, which fears for its jurisdiction and integrity in the system of sports arbitration in Europe, and its seat, as well as that of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court as the court of appeal, in light of constitutional law, the ECtHR and the latest rulings of the ECJ (ISU and Seraing cases).
In this article, Constantin Heyn and Prof. Cherkeh show the extent to which CAS arbitration agreements in doping disputes impose on athletes a right to arbitration that, from the perspective of both procedural guarantees under the rule of law under Article 6(1) of the ECHR (granting of public proceedings and legal aid) and the requirement for effective judicial review under fundamental EU law. The arbitration law applicable in CAS proceedings therefore offers no guarantee of compliance with minimum standards of the rule of law in the form of the procedural guarantees of Article 6(1) of the ECHR, nor does it offer effective judicial review of arbitral awards against the EU public policy standard. In our opinion, athletes cannot therefore be referred to such arbitration proceedings, but must have access to ordinary courts in the absence of an effective arbitration agreement until sports arbitration law meets the requirements of constitutional and European law.