Ken Foster and the Development of UK Sports Law: A Reflective Interview

Abstract

This interview is a discussion with Ken Foster, eminent and groundbreaking sports law scholar, currently Associate Fellow at the Centre for Law and Popular Culture at the University of Westminster. Foster is asked to reflect on the development of sports law scholarship from the 1980s and his own specific experiences as the first academic to teach sport and law in the UK during the 1980s. In his reflections on the development of the field, notable in its early days for ‘lack of materials’, Foster highlights theimportance of theory, of sporting culture and custom and the still under-researched area of ‘private adjudication systems in sport’. It concludes that ‘sport specific or national tribunals’ still offers a wealth of opportunities to explore materials still ‘waiting to be researched’. This interview forms part of ESLJ’s special collection, ‘Ken Foster and the Development of Sports Law’ which includes a new (2019) article by Ken Foster, ‘Global Sports Law Revisited’ https://doi.org/10.16997/eslj.228.The following questions were sent to Ken Foster in April 2018 and a dialogue took place over the following months clarifying some of the points made. The questions were designed by the ESLJ team.

Keywords

• fair play
• arbitration
• lex sportiva
• juridification
• private-public regulation
• global sports law