The Brazilian Institute of Lawyers (IAB) has approved a legal opinion arguing that Brazil’s prohibition on casinos is incompatible with the country’s current constitutional framework.
The position, approved during a plenary session on 3 June, concerns Decree-Law No. 9,215 of 1946, which prohibited casino operations across Brazil.
According to the IAB, the measure was enacted under a specific historical context and conflicts with constitutional principles established under the current legal order, including human dignity, private autonomy, free enterprise and economic freedom.
The opinion was prepared by the IAB’s Constitutional Law Commission and authored by lawyer Paulo Horn, who argued that the decree was based on “moralizing and interventionist conceptions that no longer reflect contemporary constitutional principles.”
He also added that “the rationale behind the legislation reveals a normative choice based on abstract, historically situated value categories lacking sufficient legal weight to legitimize the restriction of fundamental freedoms.”
The Commission also concluded that maintaining a blanket prohibition on casinos is inconsistent with modern criminal law theory.
“The absolute prohibition of the activity does not identify a specific, concrete and directly protected legal asset that justifies criminal intervention”, the opinion states.
According to the IAB, decades of prohibition have failed to eliminate gambling activity and instead shifted it into unregulated channels.
"The prohibitionist model has proven, over time, to be structurally ineffective, failing to eliminate the activity, but only displacing it underground and into informal and transnational environments," Horn wrote.
Paulo Horn has previously contributed exclusively to Global Gaming Insider.
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