Because of his contribution to the protection of the Indians, Vasco de Quiroga's legacy is recognized in America and Spain, and even venerated in the Catholic Church.

[1][7][better source needed] He worked as a letrado – a royal jurist in southern Spain and as a judge in Oran in Algeria from ca.

This was probably the reason that he was offered a position as oidor (judge) in the second Audiencia of New Spain when the Council of Indies had to dismiss the first in 1530.

He sat on the tribunal that ordered the president of the first Audiencia, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, to be returned to Spain in chains.

"Información en Derecho" is the lengthiest piece of writing from Vasco de Quiroga's hand that we have knowledge about; it is dated México July 1535.

It contains a detailed analysis of the legal and ethical issues concerning slavery in the Americas and includes a recommendation of a new policy towards the Indians based on the model laid out in Thomas More's Utopia.

In 1534 the Crown responded to appeals by colonists who argued that they needed slave labor to continue to make profits by repealing this law and legalizing a limited form of slavery once again.

The letter was probably directed to his friend Bernal Diaz de Luco, member of the Council of Indies.

He argued that the right way to avoid problems with unruly natives was to gather them into congregations where they would be able to be better controlled and administered, and indoctrinated into the Christian faith and a Spanish way of life.

As in More's Utopia the basic social unit would be the family headed by the "padre de familia" corresponding to More's "Paterfamilias".

[5]: 34–35 Accompanying the información en derecho, De Quiroga also sent his own translation into Spanish of More's Utopia (written in Latin), but this document has been lost.

He was nominated by the President of the Second Audiencia, Bishop of Santo Domingo, Sebastián Ramírez Fuenleal, after the first candidate Fray Luis de Fuensalida had declined the honor.

He worked to gather the Indians in large towns near Lake Pátzcuaro in the center of Purépecha territory, recently ravaged by Beltrán de Guzmán.

He gradually realized the necessity of restricting the scope of his plans, which he had hoped to apply throughout the colony, to the smaller area over which he had jurisdiction, partially because his personal funds were not unlimited.

When Quiroga became aware of this, he wrote to Charles his celebrated Información en derecho (1535), in which he strongly condemned the encomenderos, saying that they did not accept the natives as men, but only as beasts.

Here Quiroga laid out his will for the future functioning of the institutions he had established, among them the Colegio de San Nicolas.

His method of specialization by community continues to this day: Paracho produces guitars, Tzintzuntzán pottery, Santa Clara copper products and Nurío woven woolens.