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Changing Public Policy And The Evolution Of Roman Civil And Criminal Law On Gambling, Suzanne B. Faris

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

In Ancient Rome, gambling, at least in the form of dice games, was generally considered a vice, yet the only known criminal statutes prohibiting it were only sporadically and selectively enforced. Otherwise, aside from a legal prohibition on the enforceability of gambling debts and some limited private rights of action, the Roman state as a whole displayed what can only be described as a “laissez faire” policy toward all forms of gambling. What we would now call “sports betting” was exempted from the statutory prohibition altogether. This remained the case well into the Christian period, when a general crackdown might …