The Olympic Movement in International Law

Abstract

The Olympic Movement has been self-regulated from the beginning, and its private ordering is governed by the domestic law of the nations in which its organizations are domiciled and operate. Nevertheless, it is also an institution of global governance, with important ties to international law. This essay examines the nature of those ties and the push for additional alignment between the norms of the Movement and international legal norms. I first provide a taxonomy of Olympic Movement organizations, centered on the attributes that are helpful to understanding the place of each in the global governance of sport and the value the organizations produce for their diverse stakeholders. I then describe demands from international law for additional alignment with human rights and governance norms and the standard response from sport. In the final section, I argue that regulatory autonomy is necessary for sport to produce the values expected by its stakeholders; domestic law, including as it reflects international law, is generally an adequate check on abuses of that autonomy. International norms are useful not as binding law that would displace the Movement's autonomy, but as pressure for Movement organizations to consider aligning their policies and procedures with the public interests those norms reflect.