For legally inclined readers...

We draw your attention to the Loyola University Chicago Law Review, of May 2005, for the 70 page article, Enhancing the Performance of the Doping Court: How the Court of Arbitration for Sport Can Do Its Job Better by Professor Michael Straubel. It's what the title says, and the conclusions face many of the problems we've seen with the Landis case. Had it been heeded, we might not be where we are now:

CAS and AAA-CAS were constructed as arbitration institutions. However, doping cases are different from disputes that can be easily and equitably settled by arbitration. Doping cases are accusatory and quasi-criminal in nature and therefore fundamentally different from the typical contract dispute decided by arbitration. The processes and machinery for deciding quasi-crimina l cases, such as doping charges, are inherently different from the processes and machinery for deciding contract type cases.

As several CAS panels have noted, doping sanctions are penal in nature and as such, require certain protections for the accused. Among those protections are the presumption of innocence and the right to “discharge” oneself. To those protections, an unbiased and independent tribunal and methods to ensure equal protection and due process should be added. These protections are necessary because the basic objective of doping cases, like that of criminal cases, is to determine guilt.

With nearly 400 footnotes, it's not for the faint hearted, but worth a look.

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