Abstract
This chapter examines the tensions inherent in administration of imperial justice through the lens of both official discourse in the colonies and the jurisprudence of the Imperial Appeal Courts. It probes the fault lines in the ideological and jurisprudential debate over the scope of customary law in criminal trials, particularly those involving ritual murder. Officials within the imperial judicial establishment insisted on the strict application of colonial penal law in criminal trials. On the other hand, local administrative officers who were more concerned with the maintenance of social order objected to a slavish adherence to the procedural technicalities of penal law in adjudicating crimes among natives. The chapter argues that the administration of criminal justice was one legal arena where tensions within the colonial legal and judicial establishment most evidently shaped the construction of native difference.