College of Law Alumnus to serve as arbitrator at Winter Olympics
January 31, 2014
Matthew Mitten ’84, professor of law and director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University Law School, is in Sochi, Russia this month to serve as an arbitrator for the Winter Olympic Games.
“Arbitrating at the Winter Olympics is just one of the amazing, and unanticipated places a Toledo Law degree has taken our graduates,” says Daniel Steinbock, dean of the College of Law.
Mitten joins a team of nine arbitrators, all lawyers, judges, or professors from around the world who specialize in sports law and arbitration, who will settle any dispute related to the Games. This special tribunal, called the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ad hoc Division, has operated at every Summer and Winter Olympic Games since 1996.
"Professor Mitten is universally regarded as one of the most knowledgeable sports law experts in the country," says Professor Geoffrey Rapp, who teaches sports law at Toledo Law. "It's no surprise that he's been selected to play such a prominent role at a time when the whole world will be watching."
Mitten, a leading sports law scholar, has authored “Sports Law in the United States” (Wolters Kluwer 2011), and co-authored a law school textbook, “Sports Law and Regulation: Cases, Materials, and Problems” (Wolters Kluwer 2013), which is currently in its third edition, and an undergraduate and graduate textbook, “Sports Law: Governance and Regulation” (Wolters Kluwer 2013).
"It's been a wonderful experience for my students this past semester, and in years past, to take a class at Toledo in which the casebook's lead author was a UT grad," adds Rapp.
Mitten has published articles in several of the nation’s leading law reviews as well as in medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine. Mitten is a member of the CAS, the American Arbitration Association’s Commercial Arbitration, Olympic Sports, and United States Anti-Doping Agency panels, and the Ladies Professional Golfers Association’s Drug Testing Arbitration panel.
The CAS will operate in Sochi from Jan. 28 through Feb. 23. According to the applicable rules, when an arbitration request is filed by a Games participant the president of the CAS ad hoc Division sets up a panel of either one or three arbitrators. A hearing is then rapidly convened, at which all parties, witnesses, and potentially affected third parties are given the opportunity to express their legal arguments and to produce evidence. Generally, the ad hoc Division will render its decisions within 24 hours.
The CAS is a permanent arbitration institution founded in 1984 that specializes in the resolution of sports law disputes. It has its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.