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Hub AI
High, middle and low justice AI simulator
(@High, middle and low justice_simulator)
Hub AI
High, middle and low justice AI simulator
(@High, middle and low justice_simulator)
High, middle and low justice
High, middle and low justices is a distinction drawn to describe descending degrees of judicial power to administer justice by the maximal punishment the holders could inflict upon their subjects and other dependents dating back to Western feudalism. The scale of punishment generally matched the scale of spectacle (e.g. a public hanging was high justice). In France, Paul Friedland argues, "The degree of spectacle [was] originally the basis for a distinction between high and low justice", with an intermediate level of "middle justice", added around the end of the fourteenth century, to describe limited or modest spectatorship.
Low justice referred to day-to-day civil actions, including voluntary justice, minor pleas, and petty offences generally settled by fines or light corporal punishment. It was held by many lesser authorities, including many lords of the manor, who sat in justice over the serfs, unfree tenants, and freeholders on their land. Middle justice would involve full civil and criminal jurisdiction, except for capital crimes, and notably excluded the right to pass the death penalty, torture and severe corporal punishment. These powers were reserved to authorities holding high justice or the ius gladii ("right of the sword").
Although the terms high and low suggest a strict hierarchy, a case could often be brought in one of several courts, with the principle of "prevention" (in the etymological sense of Latin praevenire, "to come before") granting jurisdiction to the court in which the case was first filed or otherwise brought.
As a rule, each court administered justice in general as long as the matter was not reserved for a higher court or by virtue of some privilegium fori (e.g., of clerics to be judged in canon courts by other clergy, sometimes under ecclesiastical law, the origin of the English common-law concept—benefit of clergy). Criminal cases were generally not separate from civil actions and other types of justice--a big exception being canon law. In addition to civil and criminal trials, the notion of justice also included voluntary justice, which is really the official recording of deeds such as marital agreements, wills, grants, etc.
A right of appeal was not automatically available, and even when explicitly established, it was not always to a court of the superior political level or a higher degree of the trio. Feudal justice was a labyrinth of specific customs and rules in nearly endless variation, not governed by any clear legal logic, and subject to significant historical evolution in time. However, customary law tended by nature to be quite conservative. As in all spheres of life, feudal society did not see uniformity in law as either possible or necessarily desirable, each town and region had its customs and ways of doing things, and resented attempts to interfere with them.
While the right of justice is held by many "unique" courts, relatively strong states made it a pillar of their absolutist (re)emergence to establish numerous courts to administer justice in their name in different territorial circumscriptions, such as the royal (high) sheriffs in England, or to impose an appeal (at least unifying the law as such) to a royal court, as to the various French provincial parlements.
High justice was also known in Latin as ius gladii ("right of the sword") and in German as Blutgerichtsbarkeit ("blood jurisdiction"), Blutgericht ("blood justice" or "blood-court"), or sometimes Halsgericht ("neck justice") or peinliches Gericht ("agonizing justice"). It was the highest penal authority and included capital punishment in territories that permit it. It was held by a sovereign and commonly symbolized by regalia including the sword of justice and hand of justice. In the early Holy Roman Empire, high justice was reserved to the king. In the 13th century, it was transferred to the king's vassals along with their fiefs.
The first codification of capital punishment was the Halsgerichtsordnung passed by Maximilian I in 1499, followed in 1507 by the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis. Both codes formed the basis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (CCC), passed in 1532 under Charles V. In the Habsburg monarchy, all regional codes were superseded by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana in 1768.
High, middle and low justice
High, middle and low justices is a distinction drawn to describe descending degrees of judicial power to administer justice by the maximal punishment the holders could inflict upon their subjects and other dependents dating back to Western feudalism. The scale of punishment generally matched the scale of spectacle (e.g. a public hanging was high justice). In France, Paul Friedland argues, "The degree of spectacle [was] originally the basis for a distinction between high and low justice", with an intermediate level of "middle justice", added around the end of the fourteenth century, to describe limited or modest spectatorship.
Low justice referred to day-to-day civil actions, including voluntary justice, minor pleas, and petty offences generally settled by fines or light corporal punishment. It was held by many lesser authorities, including many lords of the manor, who sat in justice over the serfs, unfree tenants, and freeholders on their land. Middle justice would involve full civil and criminal jurisdiction, except for capital crimes, and notably excluded the right to pass the death penalty, torture and severe corporal punishment. These powers were reserved to authorities holding high justice or the ius gladii ("right of the sword").
Although the terms high and low suggest a strict hierarchy, a case could often be brought in one of several courts, with the principle of "prevention" (in the etymological sense of Latin praevenire, "to come before") granting jurisdiction to the court in which the case was first filed or otherwise brought.
As a rule, each court administered justice in general as long as the matter was not reserved for a higher court or by virtue of some privilegium fori (e.g., of clerics to be judged in canon courts by other clergy, sometimes under ecclesiastical law, the origin of the English common-law concept—benefit of clergy). Criminal cases were generally not separate from civil actions and other types of justice--a big exception being canon law. In addition to civil and criminal trials, the notion of justice also included voluntary justice, which is really the official recording of deeds such as marital agreements, wills, grants, etc.
A right of appeal was not automatically available, and even when explicitly established, it was not always to a court of the superior political level or a higher degree of the trio. Feudal justice was a labyrinth of specific customs and rules in nearly endless variation, not governed by any clear legal logic, and subject to significant historical evolution in time. However, customary law tended by nature to be quite conservative. As in all spheres of life, feudal society did not see uniformity in law as either possible or necessarily desirable, each town and region had its customs and ways of doing things, and resented attempts to interfere with them.
While the right of justice is held by many "unique" courts, relatively strong states made it a pillar of their absolutist (re)emergence to establish numerous courts to administer justice in their name in different territorial circumscriptions, such as the royal (high) sheriffs in England, or to impose an appeal (at least unifying the law as such) to a royal court, as to the various French provincial parlements.
High justice was also known in Latin as ius gladii ("right of the sword") and in German as Blutgerichtsbarkeit ("blood jurisdiction"), Blutgericht ("blood justice" or "blood-court"), or sometimes Halsgericht ("neck justice") or peinliches Gericht ("agonizing justice"). It was the highest penal authority and included capital punishment in territories that permit it. It was held by a sovereign and commonly symbolized by regalia including the sword of justice and hand of justice. In the early Holy Roman Empire, high justice was reserved to the king. In the 13th century, it was transferred to the king's vassals along with their fiefs.
The first codification of capital punishment was the Halsgerichtsordnung passed by Maximilian I in 1499, followed in 1507 by the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis. Both codes formed the basis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (CCC), passed in 1532 under Charles V. In the Habsburg monarchy, all regional codes were superseded by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana in 1768.