The Jurisprudence of Sport

Book excerpt: This textbook, the first of its kind, makes it easy--and fun!--to teach an exciting new course on the "jurisprudence of sport." Unlike sports law, which treats sports as objects of regulation by ordinary legal systems, this course treats sports and games as legal systems to be studied in their own right. The book is appropriate not only for law students but also for undergraduates; it offers an introduction to legal thinking but requires no background in legal doctrine. Student-friendly and deeply comparative, the text draws examples from the world's most popular team and individual sports and games (including baseball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, gymnastics, chess, boxing, and esports) and also from less widely known competitions (competitive eating, cornhole, etc.). Chapters are organized in an intuitive sports-focused manner, covering such issues as scoring systems, penalties, league structure, player eligibility and assignment, amateurism, officiating, replay review, and cheating. The jurisprudence of sport is a fast-developing field of academic study. The authors, one of them a leading figure in the field and both professors at top law schools, maintain a high degree of analytical rigor and theoretical sophistication. Icons sprinkled throughout introduce students to fundamental concepts, some law-particular (such as rules vs. standards and prices vs. sanctions) and others from cognate disciplines (such as agency costs, the Coase Theorem, and psychological biases and heuristics). Richly filled with comments, questions, and exercises, the text facilitates a large variety of pedagogical approaches and is suitable for 2- to 4-credit courses.