Football Law

The existence of a body of law identifiable as football law is contested. As Grayson argued, “no subject exists which jurisprudentially can be called sports law” (Grayson, 1994: xxxvii). By extension, Grayson would deny the existence of the even more discrete area of football law. Grayson favoured the label “sport and the law” reflecting his view that “[e]ach area of law applicable to sport does not differ from how it is found in any other social or jurisprudential category” (Grayson, 1994, p. xxxvii). Beloff et al. disagree. They claim that “the law is now beginning to treat sporting activity, sporting bodies and the resolution of disputes in sport, differently from other activities or bodies. Discrete doctrines are gradually taking shape in the sporting field, which are not found elsewhere” (Beloff et al., 2012: 4). Our approach finds favour with James (2017), albeit in an adapted form, who highlights two sources of sports law, and by extension football law, one operating within a public legal sphere, the other in the private sphere (James, 2017, pp. 3–24).