Standards of proof of the jurisdictional bodies of the All-Russian sports federations in disciplinary disputes

The subject. Some All-Russian sports federations have established jurisdictional bodies for mandatory pre-trial dispute resolution in professional and high-performance sports. Pretrial dispute resolution is regulated by the rules of the federations. There are no literal “standards of proof” in Russian civil and arbitration procedural legislation. However, standards of proof have been developed at courts’ practice. The situation is different with regard to the rules of the All-Russian sports federations for resolving disputes in a pre-trial manner. Some federations have established literal standards of proof (“comfortable satisfaction”, “balance of probabilities”). Most federations either referred to dispute resolution by members of their jurisdictional bodies “according to their inner conviction” (in different versions of the phrase) or did not regulate this issue.
The purpose of the study. The article analyzes the norms of the All-Russian sports federations governing the procedure for mandatory pre-trial resolution of disciplinary disputes in sports in order to consolidate the standards of proof and the principle of evidence assessment by the members of the jurisdictional bodies of the federations “according to their inner conviction, based on a comprehensive, complete and objective study of the totality of all the circumstances of the case” in various versions of the above wording.
Methodology. The authors used the method of monitoring the norms of acts of All-Russian sports federations, the method of analyzing the norms-results of monitoring, and the method of comparing the analysis results. 
The main results. As a result of the monitoring, it was revealed that the consolidation of one of the two standards of evidence (“comfortable satisfaction” and “balance of probabilities”) used in global sports for dispute resolution takes place among individual federations. It is much more common to include references to “one’s inner conviction” in regulatory norms when evaluating evidence. The latter can be considered as a standard of proof, but its compliance with “sufficient conviction” or “balance of probabilities” remains uncertain. There is also a widespread lack of a requirement in the regulatory norms of federations for members of arbitrators of jurisdictional bodies to evaluate evidence “according to their inner conviction”. However, such a legal policy of federations should not be treated critically, mistakenly equating it to ignoring the guarantees of sports entities for the predictability of disciplinary decisions. The authors also consider it necessary to consider the possibility of lowering the threshold of proof for clubs in disputes over socalled “strict liability” to a “balance of probabilities”.
Conclusions. All-Russian sports federations rarely establish literal “standards of proof”. To make progress, we may turn to the practice of courts in civil and arbitration proceedings, which has developed several “standards of proof”.
Conclusions. The legal framework of Russian smart cities, represented by sublegislative acts implementing plans and programs, is characterized by flexibility, mobility, and inconsistency.

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