Arizona Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

The Legal System

Two systems of law

Arizona's law rests on two systems at once. Congress created the Territory of Arizona by the Organic Act of 24 February 1863. The Territory's first code was the Howell Code of 1864, named for the federal judge who drafted it. That code adopted the common law of England as the rule of decision in the Territory's courts¹ — that is, judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature. Arizona became a state on 14 February 1912. Probate — wills, estates, and guardianships — sat in the county probate court in territorial days and passed to the Superior Court of each county at statehood. Deeds were recorded by the county recorder throughout.

The other system is Spanish and Mexican civil law, which governed the region before the United States acquired it. The land north of the Gila River came in by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the land south of it by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853–54². Arizona kept one large piece of that older law: community property, the rule that most of what a husband and wife acquire during a marriage is owned equally by both of them. Property one spouse brought into the marriage, or later received by gift or inheritance, stayed that spouse's separate property.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full majority was 21, for women and men alike, throughout the period³. No territorial statute fixed the age: it came in with the common law that the Howell Code adopted in 1864, and it was still 21 for any person when the Arizona Code of 1939 finally put it in writing¹. A person under 21 was a minor, and the age of majority for a woman was the same as for a man. The one age that differed by sex was the age to marry, which was lower for a girl than a boy — see Marriage, below. A married 17-year-old was still a minor.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property; what the law limited was the minor's power to part with it. A minor's contract — including a deed — was voidable: it held good until the minor chose to undo it, which he could do on reaching 21. For necessaries suited to his situation, such as food, clothing, or lodging, a minor was bound⁴. A minor's land was therefore ordinarily sold for him by a guardian under a court order rather than by the minor himself.

Marriage removed some of these limits. A married minor was no longer under a parent's control, and in 1919 the Attorney General ruled that a married girl under 21 held an adult's property rights and an adult's debts. The legislature put the rule in statute in 1947: a lawfully married person of 18 or over held the community-property rights of an adult⁵.

Marriage

Age and the parental-consent rule

From 1866 to 1901 a boy could marry at 18 and a girl at 16 on their own account. Below those ages the marriage still took place, but only with the consent of the parent or guardian having charge of the minor. An official who joined an underage couple without that consent committed a misdemeanor⁶. Nothing in the territorial statutes set a minimum age below which a couple could not marry at all; that came only in 1919.

The consent ages rose with the Revised Statutes of 1901, and the rule then kept its shape through 1950. From 1901 a license could issue without a parent's consent only where the man was 21 and the woman 18. Below those ages the clerk had to have the parents' written consent — the father's alone sufficing where both were living, and the custodial parent's where they were separated⁷. The 1913 Civil Code carried the same rule forward and punished both the clerk who issued a license without the consent and the officiant who married the couple anyway⁸. A period digest shows the same consent ages, and the license requirement, in force in 1911⁹.

In 1919 Arizona set a minimum marriage age for the first time. From that year a boy under 18 and a girl under 16 could not marry at all. There was one way around it. Where one of the two was already a parent, or was expecting a child, they could still marry on the consent of the minor's parent or guardian and the approval of a superior court judge. Even that did not help where the racial-restriction law forbade the match¹⁰.

The Arizona Code of 1939 carried both rules forward in the same terms¹¹¹². A license file for a young couple should therefore hold a parent's written consent.

Ceremony, license, and marriage by agreement

From 1864 until the Civil Code of 1913, territorial law treated marriage as a civil contract that required the consent of both parties. It named the officials who could solemnize one — that is, perform the ceremony: the governor, a judge or justice of the peace, or a clergyman or licensed preacher. Within three months the officiant sent a certificate of the marriage to the recorder of the county where it took place, and the recorder entered it in a marriage book kept for the purpose¹³. That book is the county marriage record from 1864 to 1912.

Consent alone could also make a marriage. A couple who agreed to be husband and wife and lived as such were married in the eyes of territorial law without any ceremony at all — a common-law marriage¹⁴. Arizona still recognizes one formed before 1913. No license or officiant's certificate exists for such a couple. The marriage is shown instead by how they lived, and by what they and their neighbors called the relationship. Look for a shared household, a wife using her husband's surname, children recorded as theirs, and the pair described as married in a census, a deed, or an estate file.

The Civil Code of 1913 ended common-law marriage. From that year a marriage was valid only if the couple took out a license and the ceremony was performed by someone authorized to perform it — or by someone at least one of them honestly believed was authorized¹⁴. From that year the record to look for is a license and the officiant's return, both held by the clerk of the superior court rather than by the county recorder. The clerk also filed the applicants' sworn statement of their names, ages, residences, race, and relationship, so the license file is worth ordering in full¹⁵.

A marriage that was valid where it was made was valid in Arizona from the territorial period onward¹⁶ — so a couple who lived together in a state that recognized common-law marriage may be married in Arizona's eyes even after 1913.

The restrictions on marriage

From 1864 a marriage between close relatives was void: parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and uncles with nieces or aunts with nephews¹⁷. A marriage made while an earlier spouse was living was void as well.

The restriction that reaches deepest into Arizona records is the ban on interracial marriage. The Howell Code of 1864 declared void any marriage between a white person and a Black or mixed-race person, and punished both the couple and the officiant with a fine of $100 to $10,000 or imprisonment of three months to ten years¹⁸. The act of 30 December 1865 widened the bar, adding Native American and Asian people to the groups a white person could not marry¹⁹.

The codes carried the rule forward, and the list of forbidden matches grew between the wars. The 1913 Civil Code voided the marriage of a white person, or any descendant of one, with a Black, Asian, or Native American person or their descendants¹⁹. An act approved 26 February 1931 widened the list again, to reach South Asian and Malay people as well; it also added first cousins to the relatives who could not marry, and extended the whole prohibition to children born outside marriage and their relations²⁰. A 1942 amendment dropped Native Americans from the list, and validated — from the moment they were made — marriages already contracted that the change now allowed²¹. The statutes named these groups in the racial vocabulary of their day; the quoted wording is in the citations below.

The bar ended in 1962, when the legislature rewrote the section to prohibit marriages within the degrees of kinship only²². For a couple caught by this law no valid Arizona marriage record exists for the years it was in force; look instead for a marriage in a state that allowed it.

Marriages made under Native custom on the reservations were governed by tribal and federal law rather than by the territorial or state marriage statute, and will not appear in the county license books. From 1915 there was a state route as well: a bonded superintendent or agent of an Indian school or agency could both issue a marriage license, drawn in blank from the clerk of the superior court, and solemnize the marriage²³.

Property Ownership

Men and land

A free man could acquire, hold, and convey land in Arizona, and could own it at any age; the age that mattered was the age at which he could deal in it himself. At 21 a man held full power over his own land — to buy it, sell it, mortgage it, and convey it by deed. A deed he gave before 21 was voidable, so he could undo it when he came of age⁴. A married man dealt with his own separate property — what he brought to the marriage or received by gift or inheritance — exactly as a single man did, and his separate-property deed carried his signature alone. Community land was different, and is treated below.

One racial restriction fell on land ownership, and it was aimed at Asian immigrants. It began at statehood, when the law barred any person who was not a citizen, and had not declared an intention to become one, from acquiring land. The alien land law of 1917 recast the bar around naturalization. It shut out aliens ineligible to citizenship — under the naturalization law of the day, chiefly Japanese and Chinese immigrants — from acquiring title to land, except so far as a treaty allowed. It capped their leases at five years and excepted mining lands. An alien widow or heir could still take land by inheritance, but had to sell it within five years or forfeit it to the state²⁴.

The revision of 1921 followed California's amendment of 1920 and stated the rule the other way round — aliens eligible for citizenship might acquire, possess, enjoy, transmit, and inherit real property — which, under the naturalization law of the day, left Asian immigrants out altogether²⁴. A Japanese or Chinese family's land in this period may therefore stand in the name of a citizen child or a corporation.

Women and land: separate property and community property

For a woman, everything turned on whether she was married, and on whether the land was hers separately or belonged to the community.

A single woman or widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could²⁵.

A married woman's separate property was hers, but for most of the territorial period her husband managed it. Under the act of 30 December 1865 a wife's own property remained hers and was not liable for her husband's debts. She was to draw up a signed inventory of it and record it with the recorder of her county. That filing put the world on notice of her title and kept the listed property safe from seizure for his debts²⁶.

Her husband, though, had the management and control of it during the marriage. It could be sold or mortgaged only by a written instrument that both of them signed. She then had to acknowledge it on an examination taken separate and apart from her husband — a privy examination, meant to show she was acting freely and not under his pressure²⁶. A territorial deed of a wife's separate land therefore carries both signatures and a separate certificate for her, and a recorded inventory of separate property may exist alongside it.

By the 1901 code the rule had reversed. A married woman of 18 or over had the sole and exclusive control of her separate property. She could sell it, mortgage it, convey it, or leave it by will just as if she were unmarried; her husband did not join in the deed; and the property was not liable for his debts. The substance of that rule ran through 1950, though the Arizona Code of 1939 dropped the reference to 18 and stated the control without any age at all²⁷. The privy examination went first: from 1901 a married woman's acknowledgment could be taken in the same form as if she were single, "and without any examination separate and apart from her husband"²⁷. So a deed of a wife's own land carries both signatures and a separate certificate for her in the territorial years, and her signature alone by the twentieth century.

When a wife signed a deed

A wife's signature on an Arizona deed was about community property, and the rule tightened over time. Under the act of 1865 the husband alone managed the community property, and he could sell or mortgage community land without her²⁸. The Revised Statutes of 1901 reversed that: from 1901 a sale or mortgage of community real estate was void unless the wife signed it too. The one exception was an unpatented mining claim — a claim the federal government had not yet granted. Community personal property the husband could still dispose of on his own. The 1913 and 1939 codes kept both rules²⁹, and the Supreme Court struck down a husband's solo sale of community land under them³⁰.

The working rule is simple. A deed of the husband's separate land carries his signature alone throughout. A deed of community land carries both spouses' signatures from 1901 onward, and a single-signature community deed after 1901 is either a defect or a sign that the land was separate — either way, worth investigating.

The homestead had its own signature rule. The head of a family could hold a homestead exempt from forced sale for debt up to $4,000, and where the homestead was carved out of the wife's separate property she had to join in the claim³¹.

Dower and curtesy and the change of 1866

Before 1866 Arizona followed the common law on this point. The Howell Code gave a widow dower: the use, for the rest of her life, of one-third of the land her husband had owned during the marriage³². It gave a widower curtesy, the use for his life of the land his wife had inherited³³. Each was a life interest. The survivor could use the land and take its income, but did not own it and could not leave it to anyone.

The second territorial legislature replaced that arrangement by an act approved 30 December 1865, which amended the Howell Code's chapters on marriage, married women, and divorce and repealed its chapter on dower outright³⁴. From the beginning of 1866 the community property system governed marital property. Dower and curtesy applied only in the short window from 1864 into January 1866, and an estate settled in those two years may show them.

Children and land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or purchase just as an adult did. Conveying it was the constraint: a minor's deed was voidable, so he could set it aside on reaching 21, and a buyer took the risk⁴. A minor's land was therefore sold for him by a guardian under an order of the probate court, and the guardian's sale file records the transaction.

Deed formalities and witnesses

An Arizona conveyance had to be in writing and signed by the grantor — the person giving up the land. It then had to be acknowledged, or proved and certified: the grantor appeared before a judge, a court clerk, a justice of the peace, or a similar officer, who endorsed a certificate on the deed itself. The officer could take that acknowledgment only if he knew the person before him to be the one whose name was on the deed, or if a credible witness swore to it. A husband and wife could convey the wife's land by their joint deed just as she could have conveyed it alone had she been unmarried³⁵.

The deed was then recorded with the county recorder. Recording is what makes a deed good against a later buyer. An unrecorded conveyance was void as against creditors, and against later purchasers who paid value without notice of it. It still stood good unrecorded between the parties themselves and their heirs, and against anyone who knew of it or paid nothing³⁵. A witness who proved a deed had to be credible — worthy of belief in the officer's judgment — and that was the whole test; the statute set no age. In practice deed witnesses were adults, since one might have to appear years later to prove the deed.

Native people, Mexican grantees, and aliens

Native land was largely federal business. Land held in trust for Native people or their nations, and land allotted to individuals under the General Allotment Act of 1887, was governed by federal statute. An allottee's land was held in trust for a term of years, and any conveyance he made of it in that time was void, so his power to sell was set in Washington rather than by Arizona law³⁶.

Land granted to families while the region was Mexican could be confirmed after the United States took over, though not every grant qualified. In the Gadsden strip — which is where Arizona's grants lie — the treaty recognized only grants already located and recorded in Mexico's archives. Congress created the Court of Private Land Claims in 1891 to sort the claims out, and it sat until 1904. Every grant it confirmed in Arizona lay in the Gadsden Purchase, south and east of Tucson³⁷. Where a family's title runs back to a Mexican grant, the confirming document is federal rather than a county deed.

Aliens generally could buy and hold land in Arizona; the alien land law cut aliens ineligible to citizenship out of that right, as above²⁴.

Inheritance

A person who died without a will died intestate, and a statute divided the estate. In Arizona the division turned first on whether the property was community or separate.

Community property and separate property

Two kinds of property have to be told apart before any Arizona estate can be divided. Community property is what the husband and wife acquired during the marriage through work or earnings, and each of them owned half of it. Separate property is what a spouse owned before the marriage, or received during it by gift or inheritance, and it belonged to that spouse alone. One estate could hold both, and a different rule governed each.

Under the Howell Code of 1864, land a person did not leave by will was divided equally among his children. If a child had already died, that child's own children took his share. Where he left no children or grandchildren it went to his widow for the rest of her life, and after her death to his father. A widow with children took no share of the land itself — she took her dower, the life use of one-third³⁸.

The act of 30 December 1865 rewrote the law on marriage, married women, divorce, and dower, but it left these inheritance rules in place³⁴. The result was harsh. From 1866 until the Revised Statutes of 1901, a widow whose husband died without a will and left children took no share of his separate land at all. The children took the land, and dower no longer existed. What she did take was her half of the community property, which by then was usually the bulk of what the couple owned.

Community property followed a different rule. From the beginning of 1866 it covered everything the couple had built during the marriage. On the death of either spouse, half the common property went to the survivor and the other half to the deceased's descendants. Where there were no descendants the survivor took the whole. Either way the share came subject to the debts³⁹.

Territorial law set fixed shares only for land. For personal property — money, livestock, furniture, and the like — there was no list of shares at all; the probate court simply handed the estate to whoever was entitled to it. The first written schedule of shares for separate personal property came with the 1901 code⁴⁰.

The Arizona Code of 1939 kept the community rule and set out the shares of separate property as follows⁴⁰:

So a surviving Arizona spouse ordinarily kept at least half of everything the couple had built during the marriage, and often all of it. For a family reconstruction, sort the estate into community and separate property before working out who took what. Those separate-property shares were not new in 1939: the 1901 code set them in the same terms, so they governed from the turn of the century onward⁴⁰.

Minors, guardians, and the age of fourteen

A minor inherited immediately, but the inheritance was managed for him by a guardian under the probate court's eye and under bond — a promise, backed by others who would pay if he failed, to account for the money. The guardian invested the estate, accounted to the court, and handed it over, with a receipt, when the child came of age⁴¹. That final settlement at 21 is one of the most valuable documents in Arizona genealogy: it dates the child's majority and so approximates a birth year, and it often shows a young woman's married name.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property. Watch in particular for a guardian appointed for a child whose father is alive: that usually means the child inherited from someone else — a grandparent, an uncle, the mother's family — and the estate needed a guardian even though the father was living.

For a child under 14 the court appointed the guardian, naming the father or the mother if fit. A parent could also name a guardian by will: the father with the mother's written consent, either parent where the other was dead or unable to consent, and, for a child born outside marriage, the mother⁴². At 14 a minor could nominate his own guardian, subject to the court's approval⁴¹ — so a guardianship in which the child does the choosing is evidence the child had reached 14, which brackets a birth year. Guardianship ended at 21.

Children born outside marriage

Under the territorial law a child born outside marriage was an heir of his mother and inherited her estate as if born in wedlock, but he could not claim through her from her other relatives. Two things could change that. If his parents later married and his father then acknowledged him as his child, he became legitimate for every purpose. And if he died without lawful issue, his estate went to his mother, or to her relatives if she was dead⁴³. So for the years before 1921, look for a later marriage of the parents: it is what turns a child into a full heir of his father.

Then Arizona went further than almost any state of its day. By an act effective 17 March 1921, every child born of natural parents was the legitimate child of those parents. The child was entitled to support and education as if born in wedlock, and could inherit from both natural parents and their kindred just as a child born in wedlock could⁴⁴. From 1921, then, a child's inheritance from a father did not depend on the parents' marriage, on a later marriage, or on a formal legitimation. Where paternity was disputed it was settled in a bastardy proceeding — a county court case against the reputed father, who was charged with the child's support to majority — and that file names him.

Wills, executors, and witnesses

The age to make a will was 21. From the Howell Code of 1864 on, a will had to be in writing and signed by the person making it. Two or more competent witnesses then had to sign it in his presence — the attesting witnesses, who could later swear they saw him sign. A married woman could leave by will any property that was hers⁴⁵. The 1901 code kept those requirements and added one of its own: the two witnesses had to be over 14. The same code accepted the holographic will — one written out entirely in the maker's own hand — which needed no witnesses at all⁴⁶. These handwritten wills are common in the Arizona record. Under the Arizona Code of 1939 someone who had been lawfully married could make a will while still a minor⁴⁷.

An executor had to be 21. Where a will named a minor, the court gave the job to someone else. It issued letters — its written authority to settle an estate — to an administrator who carried out the will. Or it let a competent co-executor act alone until the minor came of full age and could join⁴⁸. Either way the letters name the person who actually did the work.

A will witness had to be competent, and from 1901 above the age of 14. A gift in the will to a witness who signed it was void unless two other competent witnesses had signed as well, which is why the name of someone who takes under a will rarely appears among its witnesses⁴⁵. One community-property limit runs through every Arizona will: neither spouse could give away by will more than his or her own half of the community property⁴⁹.

Taxation

The property tax

The tax that reached individuals most broadly was the property tax, on real and personal property. Arizona had one from its territorial beginnings. An act approved 18 February 1871 taxed the assessed value of all property in the Territory that the act did not exempt. It let each county's board of supervisors add county taxes on the same property, and it took the place of the Howell Code's chapter on finance and taxation. At statehood in 1912 the new legislature adopted the pre-existing territorial property-tax laws⁵⁰. The property tax fell on the owner of the property whatever the owner's age, so it marks no age milestone; a tax list is still useful because it places a named owner in a county in a given year.

The poll tax, the road tax, and the school tax

Arizona also taxed the person rather than the property — a capitation tax, charged by the head. The poll tax runs the whole length of this guide. It starts with the Howell Code in 1864. Every man over 21 and under 60 owed five dollars unless the law excused him. He paid the assessor between the first Monday in March and the first Monday in September, and owed eight dollars if he missed that deadline⁵¹. The revenue act of 1871 kept the same ages and lowered the charge to three dollars, or five in default, and let the county collector enforce it whether or not the man's name stood on the tax roll⁵².

The 1901 code kept the same ages again and set the tax at two dollars and fifty cents a year, payable to the county of residence and collected with the taxes on personal property; it excepted Native Americans from the charge⁵². So from 1864 to 1950 a man came onto the poll list at 21 and dropped off it at 60.

The road tax was separate and was worked off as often as it was paid. Under the territorial act the supervisors levied it on all able-bodied men along with the property taxes, and every able-bodied man paid six dollars more or, at his option, worked two days on the road. By the 1901 code the charge fell on every able-bodied male resident over 21 and under 50 who lived outside an incorporated town or city. He owed two days' labor on the highways of his district, in person or by a substitute, when the road overseer called for it⁵². A poll or road tax list is valuable because it names men who owned no property, which makes it a census substitute.

A third charge fell on the person rather than on property: an annual school tax, laid by the Revised Statutes of 1913 and collected alongside the others. All three outlived the Territory. An act of 1918 exempted men in military service from any poll or school tax while they served, and through 1919 and 1920 the Attorney General was still advising county assessors on who owed them⁵³. A tax list from the state years may therefore show a man's poll, road, and school tax alongside any tax on his property.

The income and sales taxes

Two new taxes reached individuals in 1933. An act of that year imposed the first Arizona income tax, on net taxable income, payable to the State Tax Commission each March. A second act imposed the first transaction privilege tax at 2 percent on the retail sale of goods. This was a tax on the gross proceeds of a business, and the ancestor of the modern sales tax. A special session later the same year replaced it with a new one⁵⁴. Both fell on a person of any age who had the income or ran the business.

Courts, Juries, and Testimony

Jury service

Until 1901 territorial law set six requirements, and a man had to meet all of them⁵⁵. He had to be:

• a United States citizen;
• a qualified voter in the county where he was called;
• over 21 and under 60;
• sound in mind and body;
• never convicted of a felony, or of a lesser crime involving dishonesty or serious immorality; and
• able to follow the case in English.

The 1901 code restated the qualification and dropped the elector test, and in that form it stood through 1950. A juror was a male citizen of the United States who had lived in the county six months. He had to be sober, intelligent, of sound mind and good moral character, over 21, and able to understand English, and clear of any felony charge or conviction. Men over 60 could claim exemption. Dropping the elector test mattered in practice: the Supreme Court held that a man who had not yet acquired an elector's qualifications could still sit on a jury⁵⁵.

A juror needed no land. Arizona rested the qualification on citizenship, residence, age, and character alone, so a man on a jury list may have owned nothing at all. The working test through the twentieth century was an adult man of 21 who was a citizen, had lived in the county six months, and was of good character.

Women and minorities on the jury

Jury service was limited to men until 1945, though Arizona women had won the vote in 1912. In 1945 the legislature made women eligible for all jury duty, without compelling them to serve⁵⁶. From that year a woman could sit on an Arizona jury.

Native residents were kept off Arizona juries by a different route. A juror had to be a voter, and the state constitution denied the vote to anyone under guardianship — wording Arizona applied to Indians living on reservations. In 1948 the state Supreme Court ruled that the phrase covered only a guardianship ordered by a court, so Native residents could vote⁵⁷. Before that decision a Native resident could not serve on a jury; after it, that barrier was gone.

Age of criminal responsibility

The line moved twice. Under the Howell Code a child under 14 could not be found guilty of any crime, and a child was treated as of sound mind at 14, or earlier if the child knew the difference between good and evil. The 1901 code set the line at 10, so that a child under 10 could not be convicted unless there was clear proof the child knew the act was wrong, and the 1913 penal code returned it to 14⁵⁸.

Statehood added a rule that overrode all of this. The constitution of 1912 gave the superior court sole authority over every child under 18 who was dependent, neglected, incorrigible, or delinquent, or who was accused of a crime, and the legislature wrote that into the statutes at once⁵⁹. From 1912 the line was 18: a person under 18 accused of a crime went before the juvenile court — a division of the Superior Court — as a delinquent, rather than being tried as an adult. A child's case from these years is therefore a juvenile file rather than an ordinary criminal one, and those files are usually closed to the public.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify if he or she understood the obligation of an oath and could relate the facts; the judge decided competency witness by witness, and children did testify. By the twentieth-century codes the limits that remained turned on relationship rather than age. Neither spouse was generally competent to testify for or against the other without consent, with exceptions in suits between the spouses and in prosecutions for abandonment, non-support, bigamy, and like offenses⁶⁰.

The great exception in Arizona's early law was racial. Among the rules in the Howell Code of 1864 on who could be a witness in criminal cases stood a bar on any Black, mixed-race, Native American, or Asian person giving evidence for or against a white person. The statute set out blood-quantum tests for who fell inside each group⁶¹. The practical consequence was severe: a resident who was not white could not testify to protect his person or property against a white party. The bar was gone by the 1901 code, whose evidence provisions carry nothing of the kind, and competency thereafter turned on the general tests, applied to all persons alike.

Sources & Where to Verify

Constitutions

• Constitution of the State of Arizona. 1912, with amendments. Art. VI, § 6 (superior court jurisdiction over children under 18) and art. VII, § 2 (qualifications of electors, and the exclusion of persons under guardianship on which the jury cases turned). Official text. Arizona State Legislature. https://www.azleg.gov/const/ (accessed 22 July 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Arizona Code, 1939: Containing the General Laws of Arizona, Annotated. 6 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940. The code in force through the last decades covered here, and the source of most section numbers cited above. A section number gives the chapter before the hyphen, so § 63-104 is chapter 63, and the chapter tells you the volume. Digital images. Arizona Memory Project: vol. 1, chs. 1–18, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38237; vol. 2, chs. 19–37, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38238; vol. 3, chs. 38–47, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38239; vol. 4, chs. 48–62, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38240; vol. 5, chs. 63–76, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38241; vol. 6, reference tables, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38242 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Bashford, Coles, comp. The Compiled Laws of the Territory of Arizona, Including the Howell Code and the Session Laws from 1864 to 1871, Inclusive. Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1871. The Howell Code as amended, and the text of the act of 30 December 1865 on marriage, married women, and community property. Chapters cited above, by page: descent 244–46, wills 250–54, probate courts 255–94, marriages 295–96, rights of married women 305–10, revenue 311–27, conveyances 360–65, jurors 382–87, roads and highways 547–53. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp682117253 (accessed 22 July 2026). The footnotes below link to the page image; to find any other page, add 6 to the printed page number and use it as the leaf number in the address.
• The Howell Code, Adopted by the First Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Arizona. Prescott: Office of the Arizona Miner, 1865. The first territorial code: reception of the common law, criminal responsibility and the racial bar on testimony, descent, dower and curtesy, wills and executors, marriage, and the poll tax. Chapters cited above, by page: crimes and witnesses 49–50, descent 182–84, dower 184–88, wills 188–97, probate 197–229, marriages 230–32, finance and taxation 238–52, and the reception of the common law at 440. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp680529914 (accessed 22 July 2026). Leaf numbers in this scan match the printed page numbers.
• The Revised Code of Arizona, 1928. Codified and revised with historical data by F. C. Struckmeyer, Code Commissioner; annotated by Bancroft-Whitney. Phoenix, Ariz.: The Manufacturing Stationers, 1928. Digital images. Arizona Memory Project. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38235 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• The Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913: Civil Code. Compiled by Samuel L. Pattee. Phoenix, Ariz.: McNeil Co., 1913. Digital images. Arizona Memory Project. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38228 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• The Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913: Penal Code. Compiled by Samuel L. Pattee. Phoenix, Ariz.: McNeil Co., 1913. Digital images. Arizona Memory Project. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38231 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• The Revised Statutes of Arizona Territory. Columbia, Mo.: Press of E. W. Stephens, 1901. The middle of the period, and the volume that answers most questions about the years between the Howell Code and statehood. Paragraphs cited above, with the printed page: acknowledgments ¶¶ 738–39 (p. 301), recording ¶ 749 (p. 303), executors ¶ 1637 (p. 486), guardians ¶ 1956 (p. 551), descent and distribution ¶ 2117 (p. 579), jurors ¶ 2781 (p. 738), marriage licenses and parental consent ¶ 3090 and the racial bar ¶ 3092 (p. 809), married women and community property ¶¶ 3104–05 (p. 812), poll tax ¶ 3952 (p. 994), road labor ¶ 3964 (p. 996), wills ¶¶ 4214–15 (p. 1052), and Penal Code § 24 (p. 1188). Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433009076062 (accessed 22 July 2026). Also digitized by the University of Arizona Cracchiolo Law Library, https://ualawlib.omeka.net/items/show/1375.

Session Laws

• Acts, Resolutions and Memorials of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Arizona. The territorial session laws, including the revenue act of 1871 and the juvenile court act of 1907. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/esrp506296306 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Session Laws of Arizona. Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. Arizona Session Laws, 1912–present. Digital images. Arizona Memory Project. https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/64 (accessed 22 July 2026). Cited above by year and chapter: 1912, Regular Session, ch. 71 (alien ownership) and First Special Session, ch. 63 (juvenile jurisdiction); 1913, Third Special Session, ch. 16 (juvenile courts); 1915, ch. 21 (marriages at Indian schools and agencies); 1917, ch. 43 (alien land law); 1919, ch. 18 (minimum age to marry); 1921, ch. 29 (alien land law revised) and ch. 114 (legitimation); 1922, ch. 34 (the applicants' sworn statement); 1931, ch. 17 (the marriage bar rewritten); 1933, ch. 39 (income tax) and ch. 90 (transaction privilege tax), with First Special Session, chs. 8 and 17 (both replaced); 1942, First Special Session, ch. 12 (marriage bar amended); 1945, ch. 50 (women eligible for jury duty); 1947, ch. 107 (community-property rights of married minors); and 1962, Second Regular Session, ch. 14 (the racial restriction removed). The 1945 chapters are printed in the combined volume for the Sixteenth Legislature, First Special Session (1944) and the Seventeenth Legislature, Regular Session (1945).

Court Cases

• Blackman v. Blackman. 45 Ariz. 374, 43 P.2d 1011 (1935). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253045/blackman-v-blackman/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Estate of Silva. 32 Ariz. 573, 261 P. 40 (1927). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253309/estate-of-silva/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Harrison v. Laveen. 67 Ariz. 337, 196 P.2d 456 (1948). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3254299/harrison-v-laveen/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• La Tourette v. La Tourette. 15 Ariz. 200, 137 P. 426 (1914).
• Lawrence v. State. 29 Ariz. 247, 240 P. 863 (1925). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3255701/lawrence-v-state/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Nowland v. Vinyard. 43 Ariz. 27, 29 P.2d 139 (1934). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3252986/nowland-v-vinyard/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Porter v. Hall. 34 Ariz. 308, 271 P. 411 (1928). Overruled by Harrison v. Laveen. Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3255132/porter-v-hall/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Rundle v. Winters. 38 Ariz. 239, 298 P. 929 (1931). Opinion. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253834/rundle-v-winters/ (accessed 22 July 2026).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Arizona Attorney General's Office. Biennial Report of the Attorney General of Arizona, 1919–1920. Wiley E. Jones, Attorney General. Tucson, Ariz.: Southwest Printing & Binding Co., [1921?]. Opinions on the poll, road, and school taxes and on the status of a married minor. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/biennialreporta11offigoog (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Arizona Department of Revenue. Overview of the Arizona Property Tax System. PDF. https://azdor.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/PROPERTY_OverviewAZPTSystem.pdf (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Historical Tax Law Changes: Individual Income Tax and Historical Tax Law Changes: Transaction Privilege Tax. The section-by-section legislative history of each tax from its first enactment. PDFs. https://www.azjlbc.gov/25taxbook/iit.pdf; https://www.azjlbc.gov/25taxbook/tpt.pdf (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. Custodian of the territorial and state statutes and of the state's record holdings; its research guides identify the county probate, land, and marriage series described above. https://azlibrary.gov/ (accessed 22 July 2026).
• City of Phoenix. Asian American Historic Property Survey. "The Japanese American Community." The Arizona alien land laws of 1917 and 1921 as they bore on Japanese farming families. PDF. https://azhistory.net/aahps/f_japanese.pdf (accessed 22 July 2026).
• FamilySearch Research Wiki. "Arizona." County-level guides to probate, land, marriage, and tax records. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Arizona (accessed 22 July 2026). And see "Previous Jurisdictions to Land in Arizona," which lists the Mexican grants confirmed for Arizona, https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Previous_Jurisdictions_to_Land_in_Arizona (accessed 22 July 2026).
• U.S. Federal Judicial Center. "Court of Private Land Claims, 1891–1904." History of the court that confirmed the Mexican grants. https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/court-private-land-claims-1891-1904 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Foster, William E. "A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes." 10 Wyoming Law Journal 131 (1956). Cites the Arizona sections as they stood in 1939. https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol10/iss2/5 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• May, Geoffrey. Marriage Laws and Decisions in the United States: A Manual. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1929. The Arizona section, pages 43–48, states each rule from the code and gives its paragraph; the best route to the marriage law in force between the codification of 1913 and the code of 1939. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/marriagelawsdeci00mayg (accessed 22 July 2026).
• McGovney, Dudley O. "The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States." 35 California Law Review 7 (1947). Places Arizona's law among the eleven and gives its codified sections. PDF. Berkeley Law Library Catalog. https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1109213/files/fulltext.pdf (accessed 22 July 2026).
• Ringrose, Hyacinthe, ed. Marriage and Divorce Laws of the World. Toronto: The Carswell Company, 1911. A period digest; the Arizona entry at page 153 gives the parental-consent ages and the license requirement as they stood at statehood, and is the evidence that both pre-date the codification of 1913. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/cu31924021196971 (accessed 22 July 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Arizona. By Sara Louise Buchanan. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau No. 157-2 (Revised). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949. Law stated as of 1 January 1948, on the Arizona Code of 1939 and the session laws of 1945 and 1947. PDF. FRASER. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-02-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf (accessed 22 July 2026).

Citations

1. The Howell Code, Adopted by the First Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Arizona (Prescott: Office of the Arizona Miner, 1865), § 7: "The common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to, or inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the United States, or the bill of rights or laws of this Territory, is hereby adopted, and shall be the rule of decision in all the courts of this Territory," at p. 440; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp680529914 : accessed 22 July 2026), page image. The Howell Code sets no general age of majority; 21 came in with the common law adopted by this section, and was first put in statute at Arizona Code (1939), § 1-103. ↩ ↩
2. Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement with the Republic of Mexico (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), 2 February 1848, 9 Stat. 922, arts. VIII–IX (property of Mexicans in the ceded territory "shall be inviolably respected"); For the Gadsden Purchase, the treaty of 30 December 1853, 10 Stat. 1031, art. VI, which cut the other way: the United States would recognize no grant in the ceded strip made after 25 September 1853, nor any earlier grant that had not been "located and duly recorded in the archives of Mexico." For the community-property system Arizona took from that law, see Blackman v. Blackman, 45 Ariz. 374, 382, 43 P.2d 1011 (1935), which traces it to the act of 30 December 1865; opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253045/blackman-v-blackman/ : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
3. Arizona Code, 1939: Containing the General Laws of Arizona, Annotated, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940), § 1-103 (majority at 21 for any person; ch. 1 is in vol. 1); digital images, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38237 : accessed 22 July 2026). And see U.S. Women's Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: Report for Arizona, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau No. 157-2 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), no. 1; PDF, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0157-02-rev_dolwb_1949.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
4. The voidability of a minor's contracts and conveyances rests on the common law rather than on a statute; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 2, states it as a rule of common law and cites Arizona Code (1939), § 52-502, for the minor's liability, to the extent of a reasonable price, for necessaries suited to his station in life and actual requirements. Ch. 52 is in vol. 4, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38240 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩ ↩ ↩
5. Wiley E. Jones, Attorney General, Biennial Report of the Attorney General of Arizona, 1919–1920 (Tucson, Ariz.: Southwest Printing & Binding Co., [1921?]), opinion on the juvenile-court jurisdiction over a married girl under 18: "In this state a married female infant has the same legal status in regard to property rights as a man of twenty-one years of age, and has the same liabilities," the legislature having meant "to regard a married woman, under the age of 21 as fully emancipated from the legal disabilities imposed by her infancy," and infants under 21 being emancipated at common law from a parent's or guardian's control on marrying; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/biennialreporta11offigoog : accessed 22 July 2026). For the statute, Session Laws of Arizona, 1947, ch. 107 (a lawfully married person of 18 or over holds the community-property rights of a person of 21); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 10. ↩
6. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXX ("Of Marriages"), § 7, from the act of 30 December 1865: no person authorized to solemnize marriage shall "join in marriage any male under the age of eighteen years, or any female under the age of sixteen years, without the consent of the parent or guardian, or other person under whose care and government such minor may be," on pain of a misdemeanor; at p. 295, page image. Neither the Howell Code nor the act of 1865 sets any age below which a marriage could not be contracted at all. ↩
7. The Revised Statutes of Arizona Territory (Columbia, Mo.: Press of E. W. Stephens, 1901), ¶ 3090 (Sec. 4), p. 809: "No clerk of the probate court shall issue a license without the consent of the parents or guardians of the parties applying, unless the parties so applying shall be, in the case of the male, twenty-one years of age, and in the female, eighteen years of age: Provided, That when both parents are living, the consent of the father alone shall be sufficient, except in cases where the parents are living apart, and then the consent must be given by the one who has the custody of the minor"; with ¶ 3089 (the license from the clerk of the probate court) and ¶ 3091 (record and return of the license). Digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433009076062 : accessed 22 July 2026), page image. These are the paragraphs the 1913 code carried forward at note 11, and they fix the change from the ages of 18 and 16 set by the act of 1865. ↩
8. Geoffrey May, Marriage Laws and Decisions in the United States: A Manual (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1929), 43–48, the Arizona section, which summarizes each rule from the code and gives its paragraph: Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 3835 (no clerk to issue a license without the consent of the parents — if both are living that of the father alone sufficing and, when they are separated, that of the one having custody — or of the guardians, unless the male applicant be twenty-one and the female eighteen years); ¶ 3842 (fine of $10 to $100, imprisonment not exceeding sixty days, or both, on a clerk who issues a license to a male under twenty-one or a female under eighteen without it); and ¶ 3841 (fine of $50 to $300, imprisonment of not more than six months, or both, on an authorized officiant who knowingly takes part in, or sanctions by his presence or by issuing a certificate, such a marriage). Paragraph 3835 carries forward ¶ 3090 of the 1901 code, at the note above. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/marriagelawsdeci00mayg : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
9. Hyacinthe Ringrose, ed., Marriage and Divorce Laws of the World (Toronto: The Carswell Company, 1911), 153: in Arizona "[a] male must be at least eighteen and a female at least fourteen years of age to lawfully contract marriage," "[t]he consent of the parents is required in the case of males under 21 and females under 18," and, under "Preliminaries," a marriage license is required; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/cu31924021196971 : accessed 22 July 2026). The consent ages and the license requirement Ringrose reports are those of Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶¶ 3089–90, at note 10. Ringrose adds marrying ages of eighteen for a male and fourteen for a female; the 1901 code sets no such minimum, and none appears in an Arizona statute until the amendment of 1919 at note 13, so the figures are best read as the common-law ages rather than as Arizona law. ↩
10. Marriage Laws and Decisions (1929), 44, summarizing Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 3832, as amended by Session Laws of Arizona, 1919, ch. 18: males under eighteen and females under sixteen shall not marry, except that in cases of pregnancy where the prospective parent is under such age the parties may marry — unless prohibited by the statute relating to miscegenation — with the consent of the parent or guardian of the one under age and with the approval of the judge of the superior court of any county. This is the first Arizona statute to fix a minimum age for marriage. ↩
11. Arizona Code (1939), § 63-102; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 18 (males under 18 and females under 16 forbidden to marry; where either party is, or is about to become, the parent of a child, the two may marry with the consent of the minor's parent or guardian and the approval of a superior court judge, "unless such marriage is prohibited by racial restrictions"). Ch. 63 is in vol. 5, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38241 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
12. Arizona Code (1939), § 63-104 (no parental consent needed where the male is 21 and the female 18), § 63-109 (misdemeanor for a clerk to issue a license to an underage applicant without written parental consent); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 18. ↩
13. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXX, §§ 1, 6, 8–10 ("Marriage is considered in law as a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties is essential"; the governor, judges and justices of the peace, and clergymen or licensed preachers may solemnize; the officiant transmits a certificate to the recorder of the county within three months; the recorder records it in a book kept for that purpose); at p. 295, page image. ↩
14. The Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913: Civil Code, comp. Samuel L. Pattee (Phoenix, Ariz.: McNeil Co., 1913), ¶ 3844; digital images, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38228 : accessed 22 July 2026). The paragraph is marked in the margin "Common law marriage abolished, new section": "The common law rule that a marriage may be contracted by agreement of the parties without marriage ceremony is hereby abrogated, and no marriage contracted within this state shall be valid unless a license be issued as provided in this chapter, and a marriage solemnized by one of the persons authorized by law, or by some one purporting to act in the capacity of a clergyman, judge or justice, and believed in good faith, by at least one of the parties, to be such." That the section is new, and that it abrogates rather than confirms, is the authority for the earlier rule: until 1913 the common-law rule ran in Arizona alongside the solemnization provisions at note 16, whose own opening words make consent the essential thing. Carried into Arizona Code (1939), § 63-111; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 19. ↩ ↩
15. Marriage Laws and Decisions (1929), 43, 45–46, summarizing Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 3833 (license from the clerk of the superior court of the county in which one of the parties resides or in which the marriage is to take place), ¶ 3834, as amended by Session Laws of Arizona, 1922, ch. 34 (the applicants to take and subscribe an oath that they will certify truly as to their names, ages, residences, race, and relationship, the oath filed by the clerk as part of the record), ¶ 3843 (the ceremony in the presence of the officiant and at least two other witnesses of lawful age, the certificate signed by at least two of them), and ¶ 3836 (the officiant to endorse the marriage on the license and make return to the clerk within twenty days, the clerk to record the returns). ↩
16. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXX, § 5: marriages contracted outside the Territory "which would be valid by the laws of the country in which the same were contracted, shall be valid in all courts and places within this Territory"; at p. 295, page image. ↩
17. Howell Code, ch. XXX, § 2 (marriages between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and uncles with nieces or aunts with nephews are "incestuous, and absolutely void," the section extending to illegitimate as well as legitimate relations); at p. 230, page image. ↩
18. Howell Code, ch. XXX, §§ 3–4 ("All marriages of white persons with negroes or mulattoes are declared to be illegal and void," with a fine of $100 to $10,000 or imprisonment of three months to ten years on the parties and the officiant); at p. 230, page image. ↩
19. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXX, § 3, from the act of 30 December 1865: "All marriages of white persons with negroes, mulattoes, Indians or Mongolians are declared illegal and void." Codified at The Revised Statutes of Arizona Territory (Columbia, Mo.: Press of E. W. Stephens, 1901), ¶ 3092, p. 809; digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433009076062 : accessed 22 July 2026), page image. The 1871 text is at p. 295, page image. Carried into Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 3837 ("All marriages of persons of Caucasian blood, or their descendants, with negroes, Mongolians or Indians, and their descendants, shall be null and void"), the latter citing ¶ 3092 of the 1901 code as its source. ↩ ↩
20. Acts, Resolutions and Memorials of the Regular Session of the Tenth Legislature of the State of Arizona (1931), ch. 17 (House Bill No. 70), "To amend Sec. 2166, Revised Code, 1928, relating to prohibited and void marriages," approved 26 February 1931: "The marriage of persons of Caucasian blood, or their descendants, with Negroes, Hindus, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or Indians, and their descendants, shall be null and void," with marriages between the named degrees of kinship "and between first cousins" declared incestuous and void, and children born out of wedlock "or the relations thereof" included within the prohibition. The section it replaced, The Revised Code of Arizona, 1928, codified and revised by F. C. Struckmeyer, Code Commissioner (Phoenix, Ariz.: The Manufacturing Stationers, 1928), § 2166; digital images, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38235 : accessed 22 July 2026), had reached only "Negroes, Mongolians or Indians." Carried into Arizona Code (1939), § 63-107, with § 63-108 barring evasion by marriage out of state; and see William E. Foster, "A Study of the Wyoming Miscegenation Statutes," 10 Wyoming Law Journal 131 (1956), which cites the 1939 sections (https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlj/vol10/iss2/5 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
21. Acts, Memorials and Resolutions of the First Special Session of the Fifteenth Legislature of the State of Arizona (1942), ch. 12 (House Bill No. 9), "Relating to marriage; defining void and prohibited marriages, validating marriages heretofore contracted, and amending section 63-107, Arizona Code of 1939," approved by the Governor 28 April 1942: "The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void," the prohibited degrees extended to first cousins, and "the marriages of all persons heretofore contracted, which would be valid under this section, are hereby validated, ab initio, in all respects." ↩
22. The bar was removed by 1962 Session Laws, Twenty-fifth Legislature, Second Regular Session, ch. 14 (House Bill No. 50), "Relating to marriage; prescribing certain marriages as being void and prohibited, and amending section 25-101, Arizona Revised Statutes," approved 12 March 1962, which rewrote the section to read: "Marriages between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, between brothers and sisters of the one-half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews and between first cousins, is prohibited and void." The repeal falls outside the period of this guide and is given only to fix the date the bar ended. ↩
23. Session Laws of Arizona, 1915, ch. 21, §§ 1–2, as summarized in Marriage Laws and Decisions (1929), 43, 45: every bonded superintendent of an Indian school or agency may solemnize marriage and may issue licenses, the clerk of the superior court of the county in which the school or agency is located issuing them in blank on requisition and charging them against the superintendent, who remits the regular fee on issuance. ↩
24. The original restriction is Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 4716 ("Alien ownership prohibited"), from Session Laws of Arizona, 1912, Regular Session, ch. 71. It was rewritten by Acts, Resolutions and Memorials of the Regular Session of the Third Legislature of the State of Arizona (1917), ch. 43 (Senate Bill No. 147), "To amend Chapter III, Title 46, Paragraph 4716, of the Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913, Civil Code, relating to the rights, powers, and disabilities of aliens," approved 12 March 1917, capping alien leases at five years, allowing alien widows and heirs to take by inheritance but requiring a sale within five years, and excepting mining lands and treaty rights; revised by Session Laws of Arizona, 1921, ch. 29, § 3 (real property only so far as a treaty prescribed "and not otherwise"), carried into Revised Code of 1928, § 2784, and codified at Arizona Code (1939), §§ 71-201 to 71-206, with the five-year rule for other aliens taking by devise or descent at § 39-111. For the 1917 law as it worked (ownership prohibited, leases allowed up to five years) and for the act of 1921 (framed as a grant to "aliens eligible for citizenship under the laws of the United States," who "may acquire, possess, enjoy, transmit and inherit real property," and passed after California's amendment of 1920), City of Phoenix, Asian American Historic Property Survey, "The Japanese American Community"; PDF (https://azhistory.net/aahps/f_japanese.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026). And see Dudley O. McGovney, "The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States," 35 California Law Review 7 (1947), 8 n.5; PDF, Berkeley Law Library Catalog (https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1109213/files/fulltext.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩ ↩ ↩
25. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXII ("Of the Rights of Married Women"), § 1, p. 305, which secures to a woman the property she held before marriage and anything she afterward acquires, to be "contracted, sold, transferred, mortgaged, conveyed, devised or bequeathed by her, in the same manner and with the like effect as if she were unmarried"; page image. The disabilities of coverture attached to marriage, not to sex: Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), introduction, notes that the legal position of an unmarried woman was practically identical with that of an unmarried man. ↩
26. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXII, § 1, and amendments §§ 1, 3–6: a wife's property "shall be and remain the estate and property of such female," not liable for her husband's debts; a signed inventory of it is recorded with the recorder of her county and gives notice of her title; the husband has "the management and control" of it during the marriage, and no sale or other alienation may be made "unless by an instrument in writing, signed by the husband and wife, and acknowledged by her upon an examination, separate and apart from her husband." At pp. 305–06, page image. ↩ ↩
27. Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 738 (Sec. 18): "The acknowledgment of a married woman, when required by law, may be taken in the same form as if she were sole, and without any examination separate and apart from her husband." Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 3105 (Sec. 19): "Married women of the age of eighteen years and upwards, shall have the sole and exclusive control of their separate property, and the same shall not be liable for the debts, obligations or engagements of the husband, and may be contracted, sold, transferred, mortgaged, conveyed, devised or bequeathed by them in the same manner and with like effect as if they were unmarried"; ¶ 3106 (Sec. 20) (the same legal rights from the age of eighteen). Paragraphs 738 and 3104–06 are at pp. 301 and 812, page image and page image. The 1939 code restates the control without any age — Arizona Code (1939), §§ 63-302 to 63-304, and § 71-409 (the husband need not join in a conveyance of the wife's separate property) — while § 63-303 separately gives married women of 21 and over the same legal rights as men of 21 and over; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), nos. 5, 9. ↩ ↩
28. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXII, amendments § 9: "The husband shall have the entire management and control of the common property, with the like absolute power of disposition as to his own separate estate"; at p. 307, page image. ↩
29. Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 3104, p. 812: community "personal property may be disposed of by the husband only; but the wife must join in all deeds and mortgages affecting real estate except unpatented mining claims"; page image. Re-enacted in Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, ¶ 3850, which defines the common property and cites ¶ 3104 of the 1901 code as its source, and ¶ 2061, marked "new section": "No conveyance, transfer, mortgage or incumbrance of any real estate which is the common property of husband and wife, or any interest therein, shall be valid unless" both execute it; carried into Arizona Code (1939), § 71-409. Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 10. ↩
30. Rundle v. Winters, 38 Ariz. 239, 298 P. 929 (1931), voiding a husband's sole conveyance of community realty; opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253834/rundle-v-winters/ : accessed 22 July 2026). And see La Tourette v. La Tourette, 15 Ariz. 200, 137 P. 426 (1914). ↩
31. Arizona Code (1939), §§ 24-501, 24-502 (head of a family may hold a homestead of up to $4,000 exempt from forced sale; where selected from the wife's separate property she must join in the claim); Ch. 24 is in vol. 2, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38238 : accessed 22 July 2026); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 3. ↩
32. Howell Code, ch. XXVII ("Of Estates in Dower"), § 1: the widow "shall be entitled to dower, or the use during her natural life of one-third part of all the lands whereof her husband was seized of an estate of inheritance, at any time during the marriage, unless she is lawfully barred thereof," at p. 184; page image. ↩
33. Howell Code, ch. XXVII, § 32: where husband and wife were seized in her right of an estate of inheritance, on her death the husband "shall … hold the lands for his life, as tenant thereof by the curtesy," unless she left issue by a former husband to whom the estate might descend; at p. 188, page image. ↩
34. "An act amendatory of chapters thirty, thirty-one and thirty-two, Howell Code, 'Of Marriages,' 'Of the Rights of Married Women,' 'Of Divorce,' and repealing chapter twenty-seven, 'Of Estates in Dower,'" approved 30 December 1865; printed in Coles Bashford, comp., The Compiled Laws of the Territory of Arizona, Including the Howell Code and the Session Laws from 1864 to 1871, Inclusive (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1871), ch. XXXII ("Of the Rights of Married Women"), amendments § 10: "No estate shall be allowed the husband as tenant by courtesy upon decease of his wife, nor any estate in dower be allowed to the wife upon the decease of her husband." The act's own title fixes its reach: it touched chs. XXX, XXXI and XXXII and repealed ch. XXVII, leaving ch. XXVI ("Of Title to Real Property by Descent") in force. The act is printed at pp. 295–96 and 305–10; the repeal of dower and curtesy at p. 307. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp682117253 : accessed 22 July 2026), page image. ↩ ↩
35. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XLII ("Of Conveyances"), § 2 (husband and wife "may, by their joint deed, convey the real estate of the wife in like manner as she might do by her separate deed if she were unmarried"), § 3 (every conveyance in writing affecting real estate "shall be acknowledged, or proved and certified"), § 4 (the officers who may take the proof or acknowledgment), § 5 (the certificate endorsed or annexed to the conveyance), § 6 (no acknowledgment unless the person is known to the officer to be the one whose name is subscribed, "or shall be proved to be such by the oath or affirmation of a credible witness"). Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 749 (Sec. 29): conveyances of land "shall be void as to all creditors and subsequent purchasers for valuable consideration without notice, unless they shall be acknowledged and filed with the recorder, to be recorded, as required by law," but "as between the parties and their heirs, and as to all subsequent purchasers, with notice thereof, or without valuable consideration, shall nevertheless be valid and binding"; ¶ 737 (Sec. 17) (no instrument lawfully recorded unless previously acknowledged). The 1871 conveyancing chapter is at pp. 360–61, page image; the 1901 paragraphs at pp. 301 and 303, page image and page image. ↩ ↩
36. General Allotment Act (Dawes Act), 8 February 1887, ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388, § 5, under which the United States held an allotment in trust for twenty-five years or longer and declared void "any conveyance of the lands … or any contract touching the same" made before the end of that period. Restrictions on individual allotments, and the trust title of tribal land, were matters of federal law throughout the period covered here, and an Arizona county deed will not show them. ↩
37. An act to establish a Court of Private Land Claims, 3 March 1891, ch. 539, 26 Stat. 854, passed to settle claims under grants made before the cession; the court sat from 1891 to 1904. U.S. Federal Judicial Center, "Court of Private Land Claims, 1891–1904" (https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/court-private-land-claims-1891-1904 : accessed 22 July 2026). The grants confirmed for Arizona all lie in the Gadsden Purchase: FamilySearch Research Wiki, "Previous Jurisdictions to Land in Arizona" (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Previous_Jurisdictions_to_Land_in_Arizona : accessed 22 July 2026). The case files are at the National Archives, with microfilm of the Arizona district at the University of Arizona. ↩
38. Howell Code, ch. XXVI ("Of Title to Real Property by Descent"), § 1, cll. 1–2: land not lawfully devised descends "in equal shares to his children, and to the issue of any deceased child by right of representation," and where the deceased "shall leave no issue, his estate shall descend to his widow during her natural lifetime, and after her decease, to his father"; with dower at ch. XXVII, § 1. The chapter is headed "Of Title to Real Property by Descent" and sets shares for real property only; it is printed at Howell Code, pp. 182–84, page image, and reprinted at Compiled Laws (1871), pp. 244–46, page image. With dower repealed from the beginning of 1866 and this chapter left standing, a widow survived by children took nothing of her husband's separate real estate until the Revised Statutes of 1901. ↩
39. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXII, amendments § 11: on the dissolution of the community by death "one-half of the common property shall go to the survivor, and the other half to the descendants of the deceased husband or wife, subject to the payments of the debts of the deceased," and where there are no descendants "the whole shall go to the survivor." At p. 307, page image. ↩
40. Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 2117 (Sec. 2), title 18 ("Descent and Distribution"): where an intestate leaves a husband or wife and "a child or children, or their descendants, the surviving husband or wife shall take one-third of the separate personal estate," the balance to the children, and "shall also be entitled to an estate for life in one-third of the land of the intestate, with remainder to the child or children" — the remainder being what the children took when her life interest ended. At p. 579, page image. This is the first Arizona statute to set shares in an intestate's separate personal estate; the territorial chapter of descent had covered real property alone, at the note above. Arizona Code (1939), § 39-102 (separate property of an intestate leaving a spouse: with children, the survivor takes one-third of the personal estate and a life estate in one-third of the real property; with no descendants, the whole personal estate and one-half the realty, or the entire estate where neither parent survives), § 39-109 (one-half of the community property to the survivor; the other half disposable by the decedent's will and passing to the survivor if not so disposed of and no descendants survive); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 15. ↩ ↩ ↩
41. Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 1956, p. 551: "If the minor is under the age of fourteen years, the probate judge may nominate and appoint his guardian. If he is above the age of fourteen years he may nominate his own guardian, who, if approved by the judge, must be appointed accordingly"; page image. ↩ ↩
42. Arizona Code (1939), § 42-102 (in appointing a guardian for a child under 14 the court must designate the father or mother if competent), § 42-110 (guardian named by the father's will with the mother's written consent, by either parent where the other is dead or incapable of consenting, or, for a child born out of wedlock, by the mother); Ch. 42 is in vol. 3, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38239 : accessed 22 July 2026); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), nos. 25, 26. ↩
43. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXVI, § 2 ("Every illegitimate child shall be considered as an heir of his mother, and shall inherit her estate, in like manner as if born in lawful wedlock; but shall not be allowed to claim, as representing his mother, any part of the estate of any other kindred, either lineal or collateral"), § 3 (on the child's own death intestate without lawful issue the estate descends to his mother, or failing her to her relatives), and § 4 ("When, after the birth of an illegitimate child, his parents shall intermarry, and his father shall, after the marriage, acknowledge him as his child, such child shall be considered as legitimate to all intents and purposes"); at p. 245, page image. Carried forward at Revised Statutes of 1901, title 18. ↩
44. Arizona Code (1939), § 27-401 (every child born of natural parents is the legitimate child of those parents, entitled to support and education as if born in wedlock and to inherit from its natural parents and their kindred "in the same manner as children born in lawful wedlock"), from Session Laws of Arizona, 1921, ch. 114, § 1, effective 17 March 1921, which the Revised Code of 1928 prints at § 273 with the derivation "§ 1, Ch. 114, L. '21, rev.; in lieu of 1103-4, 3840, R. S. '13"; bastardy proceedings and support to majority at §§ 27-405 to 27-410. Estate of Silva, 32 Ariz. 573, 261 P. 40 (1927); opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253309/estate-of-silva/ : accessed 22 July 2026). Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), nos. 28, 29. Ch. 27 is in vol. 2, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38238 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
45. Howell Code, ch. XXVIII ("Of Wills"), §§ 1, 4 ("Every person of full age and sound mind" may devise land and bequeath personal estate, and "any married woman may devise and dispose of any real or personal property held by her, or to which she is entitled in her own right"), § 5 (the will must be in writing, signed by the testator, and "attested and subscribed in the presence of the testator by two or more competent witnesses"), § 7 (a beneficial devise, legacy, or gift to a subscribing witness is "wholly void, unless there be two other competent subscribing witnesses to the same"). At Howell Code, pp. 188–89, page image; reprinted at Compiled Laws (1871), pp. 250–51, page image. Section 6 also allowed a nuncupative — spoken — will for personal estate not exceeding $300, proved by two competent witnesses. ↩ ↩
46. Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 4214 (Sec. 3) (a will must be in writing and signed by the testator, and "if not wholly written by himself, be attested by two or more credible witnesses above the age of fourteen years, subscribing their names thereto in the presence of the testator"), ¶ 4215 (Sec. 4) ("Where the will is wholly written by the testator, the attestation of the subscribing witnesses, as required by the preceding sections, may be dispensed with"). Both are at p. 1052, page image. Neither the Howell Code nor the Compiled Laws (1871) carries a holographic-will provision, so the form entered Arizona law with this codification. ↩
47. Arizona Code (1939), § 41-101 (a person lawfully married, though a minor, may make a will); majority at § 1-103; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), nos. 1–2. The general rule of full age runs back to the Howell Code, ch. XXVIII, § 1, "Every person of full age and sound mind," at note 45. Ch. 41 is in vol. 3, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38239 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
48. Howell Code, probate provisions (compiled as ch. XXIX, "Of Probate Courts," in the Compiled Laws (1871)), § 42 (no person is competent to serve as executor who at the time the will is proved is "under the age of twenty-one years"), § 46 (where a minor is named executor, letters of administration with the will annexed issue, or a competent co-executor administers "until the minor shall arrive at full age, when he may be admitted as joint executor"). Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 1637 (Sec. 428) ("No person is competent to serve as executor who at the time the will is admitted to probate is: 1. Under the age of majority"), ¶ 1651 (Sec. 442) (the same rule for administrators), and ¶ 1650 (Sec. 441) (where the person entitled to administer is a minor, letters go to the guardian or another entitled person). At Howell Code, p. 197, page image; Compiled Laws (1871), p. 259, page image; Revised Statutes of 1901, p. 486, page image. ↩
49. Nowland v. Vinyard, 43 Ariz. 27, 32, 29 P.2d 139 (1934), opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3252986/nowland-v-vinyard/ : accessed 22 July 2026); Blackman v. Blackman, 45 Ariz. 374, 384, 43 P.2d 1011 (1935), opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3253045/blackman-v-blackman/ : accessed 22 July 2026); Arizona Code (1939), § 39-109; Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 14. ↩
50. Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXIII, "To provide Revenue for the Territory of Arizona and the several counties thereof," § 1 (a territorial tax on "the assessed value of all property in this Territory not by this act exempted from taxation," with county taxes of up to two dollars on each hundred dollars of taxable value), approved 18 February 1871; at p. 311, page image; the chapter's own note records that the act took the place of, and repealed, ch. XXXIII of the Howell Code, "Of Finance and Taxation," pp. 238–52, page image. For the adoption of the territorial property-tax laws at statehood, Arizona Department of Revenue, Overview of the Arizona Property Tax System; PDF (https://azdor.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/PROPERTY_OverviewAZPTSystem.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
51. Howell Code, ch. XXXIII ("Of Finance and Taxation"), § 66, p. 250: "Each male inhabitant of this Territory over twenty-one years of age, and under sixty years of age, and not by law exempt from poll-tax, shall pay a poll-tax for the use of the Territory and county of five dollars," half to the county and half to the Territory, paid to the assessor between the first Monday of March and the first Monday of September, "and in default of paying the same to the assessor within the time specified, each such inhabitant shall pay a poll-tax of eight dollars"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/esrp680529914 : accessed 22 July 2026), page image. The poll tax therefore runs from the Territory's first code, at the same ages it kept to the end of the period. ↩
52. Poll tax: Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XXXIII, § 45, p. 325: "Each male inhabitant of this Territory, over the age of twenty-one and under sixty, and not by law exempt from poll tax, shall pay a poll tax for the use of the Territory and county of three dollars," paid to the assessor between the first Monday of March and the first Monday of September, and in default "a poll tax of five dollars," enforced by the county collector "whether the name of such inhabitant be on his tax roll or not"; page image. Road tax: ch. LXXI ("Concerning Roads and Highways"), § 6, pp. 548–49 (the board of supervisors may levy a road tax on all able-bodied men, not exceeding five cents on every hundred dollars, collected with the other property taxes, the road tax not applying within incorporated towns or cities, and every able-bodied man paying in addition "the sum of six dollars each, or, at their option, two days' work upon the road under the direction of the road overseer"); page image. Under the later code, Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 3952 (Sec. 121): "Each person of the age of twenty-one years or over, and under sixty years, residing in this territory (except Indians) shall owe to the county in which he resides at the time the tax becomes due, the sum of two dollars and fifty cents for each year, the same to be known as a poll tax"; ¶ 3953 (collected with the taxes on personal property and entered on the tax roll); and ¶ 3964: "Every able-bodied male resident of the territory over twenty-one years and under fifty years of age and not residing within the corporate limits of an incorporated town or city shall be required to perform, either in person or by substitute, two days' labor on the highways within his district." At pp. 994 and 996, page image and page image. For the survival of the poll and road taxes after statehood, see note 53. ↩ ↩ ↩
53. Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, title 49, ch. 14 (the annual school tax), with ¶ 5044 exempting a member of the National Guard of Arizona from it while he serves. Session Laws of Arizona, 1918, First Special Session, ch. 12, art. IV, subdiv. (e), p. 47, "An Act to Extend Protection to the Civil Rights of Members of the Military and Naval Establishments of the United States Engaged in the Present War": "All persons in military service shall be exempt from any poll or school tax during the period of military service." Both are set out, and the poll, road and school taxes treated as current charges, in Biennial Report of the Attorney General of Arizona, 1919–1920: the circular to all county assessors on military exemptions, the opinion of 10 November 1919 to Geo. F. Senner on payment of school and road taxes by ex-soldiers and sailors, the opinion of 9 March 1920 to the county assessor of Greenlee County on the school tax, and the ruling that no exemption from school or poll tax existed for veterans of the Spanish-American War. The poll, road, and school taxes were still being levied at the close of the period covered here. ↩
54. Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee, Historical Tax Law Changes: Individual Income Tax ("Laws 1933, Chapter 39 imposed the first Arizona State Income Tax," levied on net taxable income and payable to the State Tax Commission on 15 March each year); PDF (https://www.azjlbc.gov/25taxbook/iit.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026); and Historical Tax Law Changes: Transaction Privilege Tax ("Laws 1933, Chapter 90 levied the first Arizona Transaction Privilege Tax," on the gross proceeds of business, at 2 percent on the retail sale of tangible personal property, effective after 30 April 1933, with Laws 1933, 1st Special Session, ch. 17 establishing a new tax in its place); PDF (https://www.azjlbc.gov/25taxbook/tpt.pdf : accessed 22 July 2026). The corporate tax of the same session was likewise replaced, Laws 1933, 1st Special Session, ch. 8. The handbook prints its chapter numbers and figures from the acts themselves. ↩
55. For the earlier rule, Compiled Laws (1871), ch. XLVII ("Of Jurors"), § 4: "A person shall not be competent to act as juror unless he be — First. A citizen of the United States. Second. An elector of the county in which he is returned. Third. Over twenty-one and under sixty years of age. Fourth. In the possession of his natural faculties," nor if convicted of "a felony or misdemeanor, involving moral turpitude," nor "unless he understands proceedings in the English language"; § 5 (the exempt classes), § 6 (excuse for hardship), and § 2 (the supervisors' annual list of persons "qualified and liable to serve as jurors," certified to the clerk of the District Court). At pp. 382–84, page image. For the later rule, Revised Statutes of 1901, ¶ 2780 (Sec. 6) ("All male persons are competent who possess the qualifications in this act specified"), ¶ 2781 (Sec. 7) (a juror "shall be a male citizen of the United States, a resident of the county, for at least six months next prior to his being summoned as a juror, sober and intelligent, of sound mind, and good moral character, over twenty-one years of age, and shall understand the English language," and not convicted of or charged with a felony), ¶ 2782 (disqualifications in a particular case), ¶ 2783 (the exempt classes, headed by "All persons over sixty years of age"). At p. 738, page image. The rule carried unchanged to the end of the period: Arizona Code (1939), ch. 37 ("Juries and Jurors"), § 37-102, in the same words, with the history line "R. S. 1901, § 2781; 1913, § 3516; R. C. 1928, § 1905"; § 37-104 (the exempt classes, headed by persons over 60); and § 37-101 (a grand jury of sixteen to twenty-one men, a trial jury of twelve). Neither statute sets a freeholder qualification. The annotation to § 37-102 records that under it "persons who have not yet acquired the qualifications of electors may be entitled to sit upon a jury," citing Lawrence v. State, 29 Ariz. 247, 240 P. 863 (1925); opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3255701/lawrence-v-state/ : accessed 22 July 2026). Ch. 37 is in vol. 2, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38238 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩ ↩
56. Session Laws of Arizona, 1945, ch. 50 (women eligible for all jury duty, but not compelled to serve); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 32. ↩
57. Harrison v. Laveen, 67 Ariz. 337, 196 P.2d 456 (1948), construing "persons under guardianship" in the Ariz. Const. of 1912, art. VII, § 2, and in Arizona Code (1939), § 55-201, to mean a guardianship established by a court, so that the clause "has no application … to the Federal status of Indians in Arizona as a class," and expressly overruling Porter v. Hall, 34 Ariz. 308, 271 P. 411 (1928), opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3255132/porter-v-hall/ : accessed 22 July 2026); opinion, CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3254299/harrison-v-laveen/ : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
58. Howell Code, criminal provisions on who is capable of committing crimes, § 3 (a person is of sound mind who "hath arrived at the age of fourteen years: or before that age, if such person know the distinction between good and evil"), § 4 ("An infant under the age of fourteen years shall not be found guilty of any crime"), at p. 49, page image. Revised Statutes of 1901, Penal Code, § 24: "All persons are capable of committing crimes except those belonging to the following classes: (1.) Children under the age of ten, in the absence of clear proof that at the time of committing the act charged against them, they knew its wrongfulness," at p. 1188, page image. The Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913: Penal Code, comp. Samuel L. Pattee (Phoenix, Ariz.: McNeil Co., 1913), § 24, which restores fourteen and carries the marginal derivation "Sec. 24, P. C. 1901"; digital images, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38231 : accessed 22 July 2026). ↩
59. Ariz. Const. of 1912, art. VI, § 6: "The superior court shall have exclusive original jurisdiction in all proceedings and matters affecting dependent, neglected, incorrigible or delinquent children, or children accused of crime, under the age of eighteen years," with the judges to examine such children in chambers ahead of any criminal prosecution and power to suspend the prosecution. Carried into statute by Session Laws of Arizona, 1912, First Special Session, ch. 63, § 1, re-enacted by Session Laws of Arizona, 1913, Third Special Session, ch. 16, and printed as Revised Statutes of 1913, Civil Code, title XXVII ("Juvenile Courts"), ¶ 3562, which defines the dependent, neglected, incorrigible, and delinquent child and directs that the record of the proceedings "be kept in a docket separate from all other proceedings of said court." ↩
60. Arizona Code (1939), § 23-103 (competency of spouses to testify in civil actions), §§ 44-2701, 44-2702 (spousal testimony in criminal actions, with exceptions for suits between the spouses and for abandonment, non-support, bigamy, and like offenses); Ch. 23 is in vol. 2 and ch. 44 in vol. 3, Arizona Memory Project (https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38238 and https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/38239 : accessed 22 July 2026); Legal Status of Women in Arizona (1949), no. 13. ↩
61. Howell Code, "Who may be a Witness in Criminal Cases," § 14: "No black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian, or Asiatic, shall be permitted to give evidence in favor of or against any white person," with a person of one-fourth or more "negro blood" deemed a "mulatto" and one of one-half "Indian blood" deemed an "Indian." At p. 50, page image. The statutory terms are quoted here only to identify the provision. ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.