Aztec Law, Disputes and Social Order

The Mexica, one of the Nahua peoples who spoke Nahuatl, founded Tenochtitlan in 1325. The city, now Mexico City, became the capital of a powerful central Mexican state. In 1428, Tenochtitlan joined Texcoco and Tlacopan in the Triple Alliance.

Palace courts in Tenochtitlan

The Florentine Codex, compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua collaborators and completed in 1577, describes several hearing rooms in the Mexica ruler’s palace. The tlacxitlan heard criminal matters, disputes and petitions from commoners, while the teccalli or teccalco was where senators and elders heard commoners’ civil claims. The tecpilcalli handled cases involving noble soldiers and other military men.

In a civil property dispute, judges first asked for a painting showing the matter at issue, such as a house or maize field. As a case neared decision, the senators sought witnesses who affirmed what they had seen or heard. The account also says judges could delay cases to obtain bribes or because of parentescos, family connections. It describes this favoritism as a danger to sound judgment and links official accountability to the ruler’s supervision.

The account places the punishment of seven Tlatelolco judges during Motecuzoma’s reign: after a report that they had judged unjustly, they were imprisoned and sentenced to death. In the tecpilcalli, a noble warrior accused of adultery could also be sentenced to death; Sahagún gives one named case ending in public stoning. The tlacxitlan could order death, exile, confinement or loss of noble standing, and it could free people who had been unjustly enslaved. During a famine in Motecuzoma’s reign, the account says he reimbursed owners with gifts and maize so that nobles sold by their families could be released.

Merchant jurisdiction and market rules

Sahagún’s Book IX describes senior merchants who governed the trading community. They held a separate jurisdiction and judged offenses committed by merchants, including cases for which they could impose a death sentence. The same merchant authorities supervised activity in the market and punished people who committed offenses there.

Hernán Cortés’s 1520 Second Letter describes another layer of market oversight in Tenochtitlan. He reports that ten or twelve judges sat in a large building on the square to decide market disputes and punish offenders. Other officials walked among sellers, inspected the measures used in transactions and broke measures found to be false. Cortés also says the market sold goods by measure or number rather than weight.

Sahagún says the ruler assigned market supervisors to particular kinds of merchandise. Each official helped set prices and guard against fraud between sellers and buyers. His account also describes a case involving goods suspected of theft. A seller of a rich cloak or precious stone believed stolen could be put to death if unable to identify the person who sold it to them. Here, authorities connected the seller’s explanation of a valuable object’s source to judgment about the sale.

Texcoco and later claims

The palace court descriptions above concern Mexica Tenochtitlan. Jerome Offner’s study focuses on the separate political community of Texcoco, whose legal history he examines through colonial reports, pictorial manuscripts and oral accounts.

In 1531, residents of Huexotzinco, now Huejotzingo in Puebla state, sued Spanish colonial officials over excessive tribute. Eight painted pages of the Huexotzinco Codex recorded goods and quantities demanded as taxes and were submitted as evidence; the community won its case.

For the wider setting, see Aztec History and Society.