This chapter explores the impact of the operation of and tension between imperial, political and legal imperatives and micro-politics within colonies, with reference to the careers of British colonial judges, and the rule of law and judicial independence in those possessions. It focuses on the trials and tribulations of those men who were alleged or were found to have misbehaved by confusing law and politics. The geopolitical insights are important if, on the one hand, people are to avoid Whiggish assumptions about the glittering role of 'justice' and the 'rule of law' in the imperial record, and, on the other, recognize that, even in oppressive circumstances, colonial judges with a sense of their obligation to uphold the rule of law, had the courage to speak out episodically about executive and legislative abuses of power and the inequalities of justice and its administration.