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Trust, Competition, and Preventive Justice: Responding to Rule Violations in Sport

John William Devine Orcid Logo

The Journal of Ethics

Swansea University Author: John William Devine Orcid Logo

Abstract

Meaningful sporting competition rests on athletes complying with rules that they can easily violate undetected. From match-fixing, where players attempt to lose by illegitimate means, to doping, where players attempt to win by illegitimate means, sport is replete with trust-based rules. How should s...

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Published in: The Journal of Ethics
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67864
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Abstract: Meaningful sporting competition rests on athletes complying with rules that they can easily violate undetected. From match-fixing, where players attempt to lose by illegitimate means, to doping, where players attempt to win by illegitimate means, sport is replete with trust-based rules. How should sports authorities respond to the breach of such rules? I argue that trust-based rules pose a unique ethical challenge for sports authorities, and their violation requires a distinctive institutional response. Specifically, the principal response to such violations should be preventive rather than punitive. Sports authorities should mitigate the risk posed by violators of trust-based rules to the meaningfulness of future competition rather than punish violators for past wrongdoing. This paper develops a preventivejustice approach to the most routinely flouted, and widely discussed, variety of trust-based rule in sport – anti-doping rules. This argument illuminates the treatment of other types of trust-based rule in sport and trust-based rules in certain non-sporting rule-bound competitive contexts.
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering