Another great edition of the Summer School International Sports Law
Our Board member Gunhild Godenzi, who holds the Chair in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law at UZH, leads the Summer School International Sports Law together with CRSA member Ulrich Haas, also from the UZH Faculty of Law. For its fourth edition this summer, it brought together 40 students from around the world in Zurich for three weeks on the legal framework of the fight against doping.
This framework spans several legal worlds: the rules and internal tribunals of sports organisations, arbitration before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and state criminal law and international law. The Summer School brings these worlds together, and its participants as well: they come from law, history, business, international relations and many other fields, making the programme truly interdisciplinary. They learned from leading experts from the legal profession, sports federations, WADA and national anti-doping agencies, the European Court of Human Rights and CAS, and criminal prosecution authorities. Beyond the classroom, they visited CAS and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the FIFA Museum and On Labs in Zurich.
In the Moot Court, the students then took the floor themselves. Teams competed against each other, pleading an anti-doping case drawn from practice in front of professionals. The final took place in an impressive setting: FIFA headquarters on the Zürichberg. Previous finals have been held in the historic courtroom of the Zurich High Court and at the Zurich District Court.
Within the programme, Gunhild Godenzi taught sessions on criminal law topics, including the dual system of procedures and sanctions in doping cases, the criminalisation of doping using the Swiss example, and criminal proceedings in doping cases. She also knows sport from the inside: for more than ten years she was a high-performance athlete and a member of the German national judo team. On the legal side, she has worked as an investigating officer at the public prosecutor's office of the Canton of Zug and as a defence lawyer, and today she is an expert on the rights of the accused in criminal proceedings. In her words: "My legal profession and my passion for sport now come together perfectly in my work."
Her current research takes these questions further. It focuses on the interfaces between sports law proceedings and criminal proceedings in doping cases, two areas of law with colliding paradigms. What is an athlete's status as an accused person, which fundamental procedural rights apply, and can evidence be transferred from one procedure to the other? Another focus is the procedural position of minors in doping cases and the need for age-appropriate procedural standards.
Thank you, Gunhild and Ulrich, for bringing students, practice and research together in Zurich, and congratulations to all participants on three intense weeks.
The next edition will take place in Zurich in July 2027, with applications opening in early 2027. More about the Summer School 2027: https://www.ius.uzh.ch/de/staff/professorships/alphabetical/godenzi/Lehre/summer-school-2027.html