Sports justice: from the disciplinary file to the TAD and the CAS

Published on June 26th, 2026

Sports run on their own rules and their own system of justice, sitting alongside ordinary law without ever quite overlapping with it. A disciplinary file turns on which body has jurisdiction and on deadlines that are often measured in working days rather than months, and since a day lost can close a route for good, the submission and the evidence have to be ready before the deadline bites.

The ladder of instances

• Federation disciplinary bodies: the first instance before the relevant federation (competition and disciplinary committees).
• Administrative Court for Sport (TAD): governed by Act 39/2022 of December 30th on Sport, it is the last administrative instance in disciplinary matters in Spanish sports. Its scope is narrow, and since that Act the TAD only reviews federation sanctions that entail the definitive deprivation, revocation or suspension of all the rights attached to the license (articles 114 and 120). Ordinary competition discipline, a few matches' suspension, is exhausted within the federation and does not reach the TAD (articles 97 and 117).
• Administrative-litigation route: the TAD's decisions exhaust the administrative route and are challenged before the Central Administrative Courts (article 120.4 of Act 39/2022).
• CAS, in Lausanne: international sports arbitration, the leading forum for matters with an international dimension (competitions, doping, transfers).

A suspension in the middle of the season

When a federation committee suspends an athlete for several matches mid-season, the appeal is exhausted inside the federation, through the complaint system that its own disciplinary rules must provide for (article 97.2 of Act 39/2022), and the time limit is often counted in a few working days.

Whether the athlete competes the following weekend or sits it out therefore turns on whether the appeal and the evidence were ready beforehand. An appeal to the Administrative Court for Sport only opens up where the sanction goes as far as definitively depriving, revoking or suspending all the rights attached to the license.

Beyond Spain: the CAS

If the case has an international dimension, a sanction imposed by an international sports body for instance, the route that counts may be arbitration before the CAS in Lausanne from the outset, with its own rules and its own deadlines. Working out which instance has jurisdiction from the first day is what keeps the single opportunity to mount a defense from being lost.

How I approach it

I know this field closely, having trained in it specifically (a master's degree in Sports Law from the ICAB) and worked in it during my years in business law practice, with athletes and clubs. To my usual preparation I add here day-by-day tracking of deadlines that leave no margin.

If a sanction has landed on you, tell me the exact date it was notified, because the clock starts then and the margin is thin. Write to me as soon as it arrives, or read first how I handle sports law matters. Doping cases often travel with this subject, and I cover them in doping and sports discipline.

Editorial responsibility: Carles Jiménez, Spanish lawyer (Barcelona Bar No. 34.946). This note was prepared with the assistance of artificial-intelligence tools and reviewed and approved by the author before publication.

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