In
historical legal systems, an
outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the
law. In pre-modern societies, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to
persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In
early Germanic law, the
death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of
homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.