Legality of Multiple Extensions of the Time Limit by the Court of Arbitration for SportBased on the Principle of Celerity

There were some awards of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) challenged by the parties to be set aside for being incompatible with the principle of celerity because of multiple extensions of the time limit. The Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) dismissed the parties' application by examining public policy, the equality of the parties and jurisdiction, and decided that the delay to render a CAS award was reasonable. The indicative and tolerant nature of the relevant rules justified the delay of the CAS proceedings, which was "endorsed" by SFT. The European Court of Human Rights would probably rule that Switzerland had not violated the obligation of states parties to guarantee a reasonable time under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, in other words, the delay of CAS complied with the human rights law. However, it still could not alleviate the parties' sense of "late injustice", which was also established by relevant facts, and thus it triggered the conflict between the injustice perceived by the parties and the justice in positive law. In this regard, CAS, SFT, athletes and other parties, lawyers and other relevant parties may take some measures to prevent multiple extensions of the time limit before CAS being challenged.