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").