Fair play and refereeing. A legal strategy against corruption in sport

Many phenomena of sports corruption or match fixing often involve referees and are caused by various factors. In this paper, it will show that integrity of referees is threatened by a lack of legal control (i.e. procedural) of their decisions. Surely, doping, match-fixing and gambling are the most important harmful practices against sports and take advantage of lacking setting of technical regulation in many countries and disciplines. These unlawful activities are often realized by referees and affect especially the essence of the agonistic contest, that is unpredictability. The decisions of referees in a competition are unquestionable, both in the field and after the races, but the rule is debated and debatable. In law, this issue concerns the limits of the power of judge and it evokes the ancient latin maxim Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who watches the watchmen?). Nowadays, in many cases, it is possibile to suspend the dispute and to contest a referee’s decision (for instance, the request of the "slow motion" in basketball or in volleyball), but it’s not frequent the faculty of appeal to a different judge during the competition (as in the sailing races before the protest committee). To preserve the integrity of referees, it is not enough to set an ethical code, but it is appropriate a legal strategy, using the fair play principle even in the technical sports regulation. Indeed, fair play applies not only to athletes but also to the referees, who are really judges, and it realizes the practice of fair trial in the technical dispute, which is the first instance of sports justice. It is a legal possibility to check quickly the application of technical rules by the referees (even in the hard cases, as a penalty assignment in football), according to a fast but fair procedure of reviewing the decisions. This legal practice has at least two advantages: it applies an ethical procedure in sports and it is a normative intervention inside the competition. Could be fair play for referees an indirect means to combat sports corruption?