An Overview of the Legal System of the Aztec Empire 86 Law Library Journal 1994

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86 Law Libr. J. 259 (1994)
An Overview of the Legal System of the Aztec Empire

handle is hein.journals/llj86 and id is 273 raw text is: An Overview of the Legal System of the Aztec Empire*
Francisco Avalos**
Mr. Avalos presents a descriptive overview of the legal institutions
and substantive law of the Aztec Empire.
I. Introduction
Soon after Hernan Cortes and his men arrived in Mexico in 1519, they
witnessed incidents that suggested to them that the Aztec Empire had a
formal legal system. Cortes wrote in one of his letters to the King and
Queen of Spain, [C]r~ese que deben tener alguna manera de justicia para
castigar los malos (I believe that there exists a judicial system to punish
the wicked).' Bemal Diaz del Castillo, one of the soldiers in Cortes'
group, witnessed an appellate case soon after the Spaniards' arrival in the
Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.2
The Aztec Empire did have a formal legal system in place when Cortes
and his men arrived in Mexico, but, unfortunately, many of the details of
the Aztec legal system have been lost forever. There are several major
reasons for the loss of this information. First, the Aztecs were just
beginning to develop a written language when the Spaniards arrived.
Because they were at the beginning stages of going from pictographic
writing to phonetic writing, they had few written records at the time of
the conquest. A second reason is that most of the pictographic legal tablets
that were found by the Spaniards were destroyed by the Spanish religious
authorities as heretic material. Third, the Spanish chroniclers of the day
were not legal scholars, nor were the Aztec people they interviewed and
used as their sources. Aztec judicial officials were reluctant to reveal them-
selves for fear of persecution. Consequently, many important legal facts
and issues were never recorded. What was recorded was as the Spanish
chroniclers perceived it to be and not necessarily as it was in fact.
* © Francisco Avalos, 1994.
** Assistant Librarian, Foreign Law Collection, University of Arizona College of Law Library, Tucson,
Arizona.
1. SALVADOR TOSCANO, DERECHO Y ORGANIZACI6N SOCIAL DE LOS AZTECAS 24 (1937).
2. Id. at 31.
3. See generally LUCIO MENDIETA Y NOREZ, EL DERECHO PRECOLONIAL (1937).