Entertainment and Sports Law Journal

Ken Foster and the Development of Sports Law

ESLJ has enjoyed a long and fruitful association with Ken Foster and the area of global sports law he helped pioneer from 1987. Foster's approach has always been to ask fundamental questions and then ask them again as in Is There a Global Sports Law? (2003). David McCardle next picked up one of these. As Boyes explains (see below) Foster's 'theoretical and thematic perspectives ... remain, without exception, at the core of sports law scholarship'. Two years on, Foster in ESLJ considered the lex sportiva and the CAS and then (with Guy Osborn) Law's interdisciplinary turn (2010). From 2019 there are three new contributions. Firstly, Ken Foster's 'Global Sports Law Revisited' considers some of his central concerns anew - the extent of sports' autonomous self-governance, its claims to legal immunity and what recent developments suggest for reforms. Simon Boyes' 'Ken Foster and the Genesis of Sports Law: A Personal Perspective' highlights three landmark contributions and the golden thread of the 'notion of "juridification"' at the heart of the work he pays tribute to. Lastly Foster's recent interview with ESLJ highlights the importance of 'theory', sporting culture and custom and 'private adjudication systems in sport' an area still calling out for further research.