The Regulation of Legal Ethics in Professional Tennis

The International Tennis Federation ("ITF") has carved a small place for the ethical regulation of its officials and in addition created an independent ethics commission to administer disputes under its ethics code. The limited application of the code and the commission is evident from the fact that the majority of issues regulated by the ITF through its internal institutional rules is subjected to the jurisdiction of one or more arbitral tribunals. Even so, the role of the ITF's Ethics Commission is not trivial. It has authority to investigate any action whereby an official brings the sport into disrepute, from bribe-taking to indecent behavior in and off the tennis courts, as well as any actions that interfere with its nomination and election processes. It is suggested that ethical instruments and entities of this kind enhance the work of international sports governing bodies, but ultimately such bodies rely on arbitral awards to retain some degree of consistency and uniformity in their overall work. This is something that ethics commissions cannot deliver. While the Ethics Commission enjoys the right to investigate alleged breaches of the code and impose sanctions where the official in question does not contest the findings of the investigation or the sanction, where the official denies the charges or the sanction the matter is referred to the ITF's Independent Tribunal. The key aim of the article is to demonstrate how a top-range Sport Governing Body ("SGB") such as the ITF regulates ethical issues and in what manner it integrates these within its broader range of regulated conduct and disputes. Ultimately, on the basis of the available evidence, ethical regulation occupies a rather minute part of the ITF's broader regulatory scheme.