Degrees of join-distributivity via Bruns-Lakser towers

We utilize the Bruns-Lakser completion to introduce Bruns-Lakser towers of a meet-semilattice. This machinery enables us to develop various hierarchies inside the class of bounded distributive lattices, which measure $\kappa$-degrees of distributivity of bounded distributive lattices and their Dedekind-MacNeille completions. We also use Priestley duality to obtain a dual characterization of the resulting hierarchies. Among other things, this yields a natural generalization of Esakia's representation of Heyting lattices to proHeyting lattices.