On Legal Status Of Olympic Volunteers

The modern Olympic Games is a social activity that being greatly supported by the volunteer service. Without the selfless devotion and enthusiastic participation from the Olympic volunteers, it is impossible to hold any Olympic Games nowadays. The development of our volunteer activities is greatly promoted by the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, which has accelerated the process of our volunteer legislation. There are 21 provinces or municipalities that have already been constituted and applied the parochial volunteer legislation by the fist day of the year 2008.But in the aspect of rules and regulations, these legislations do not embody the crux of the matter, namely the legal status of the volunteers, the legal relations between the relative subjects, the contribution of responsibilities for volunteer activities,the character and extent of liability, etc. For these reasons, the current legislations do not work as well as they should be, and hinder the development of volunteer activities in China which is also a potential problem of the Beijing Olympic Games.This article makes a comprehensive and exploratory analysis on the legal status of the Olympic volunteers by the juristic, management and social theories. It defines the concept of Olympic volunteer, volunteer service and the liabilities of volunteer service by the way of legal theories. Through analyzing the prerequisites of the Olympic volunteer and their volunteer service, and the legal relations between the relative subjects, namely Olympic volunteer, Olympic organizing committee and the service accepter, it makes clear that the specific rights and duties of these subjects. And after that, it defines the nature of Olympic volunteer service and the contribution of liabilities, and the doctrine of liability fixation according to the characteristics of the Olympic volunteer service. So we can give a primary suggest on the reasonable settlement of the disputes arising by Olympic volunteer service during Olympic Games in order to protect the legal rights and interests of Olympic volunteers, which can supply a practicable method for regulating the volunteer service by legal system too. In addition, as a specific handling model to Olympic volunteer service, this study is a reference for the standardization and legalization of the volunteer services in all the fields of our society in the future.