Disciplining judges or removing them from office has always proven a messy business. In addition to the strong personalities involved, judicial sanction invariably raises “the seemingly timeless, enduring, and unresolved issue of the proper relationship of the judges to politics” (p. 9). In his new book, John McLaren explores the interaction of judicial discipline and politics in the nineteenth-century British Empire. Putting aside controversies involving competency or moral turpitude, McLaren focuses on judges who became targets for discipline because of their involvement with colonial politics. He documents the experiences of ten or so “colonial judge[s] in trouble” across the empire: British North America, Australia, the Caribbean, and West Africa (p. 4). McLaren reconstructs the vociferous clashes that pitted judges against colonial executives by excavating the record based on archival correspondence, newspapers, and case reports. The evidence reveals that such battles were often grounded in dissonance between local laws and legal culture and the judiciary’s preference for the more familiar English common law.

To be fair, the deck was often stacked against the judges from the outset. While judicial independence had been a battle fought, and largely won, in seventeenth-century England, colonial judges throughout the nineteenth-century continued to be appointed “at pleasure.” In addition, they found themselves thrust into settings in which the line between law and politics was blurry or, in some cases, nonexistent. Colonial executives—often military men—resisted having their executive decisions or legislation subject to judicial oversight. Judges often found themselves playing politics because the job demanded it. In addition to duties from the bench, judges sometimes advised the colonial governor as members of the executive council, or drafted the laws they would later interpret. Their work took place under the intense scrutiny of an agitated press and the volatile expectations of the powerful interests of settler society.

Some judges navigated these competing demands judiciously and felicitously. Others were petty and obstreperous. Some staked out bold positions against local corruption. Others were most keenly interested in their own pocketbooks. In the multiracial colonies of the Caribbean, a few brave souls questioned the denial of certain civil liberties to former slaves. Whatever the context, the judges profiled in this book—on account of personality or principle or both—found themselves under attack. The charting of the downward career spiral of McLaren’s “parade of eccentrics, malcontents, mavericks, and egomaniacs” (p. 273) provides much of the book’s appeal. Rather remarkably, the Colonial Office frequently re-appointed judges removed from one colony and allowed them to try their hand in another. Several difficult characters did not get a third chance.

Although each colonial setting provided unique challenges and dynamics, many of the political tensions and the inherent vulnerabilities of the colonial judicial office occurred across the various colonies examined. Unsettled and competing conceptions of judicial independence, the rule of law, and the separation of powers all figured prominently in the professional lives (and professional deaths) of these colonial judges. McLaren’s skill lies in revealing how such disputes took on different dimensions depending on the particular colonial context. Justice J. H. Bent emerges as a target for derision among the settler population (and readers) for his preachy insistence on English law in preference to local laws and customs in New South Wales; a decade later, his “rigid commitment to English law” appears more sympathetic when he resurfaces in Grenada, and his legalistic principles lead him to speak out against the mistreatment of slaves (p. 235).

McLaren’s case studies illuminate our understanding of the fractious judicial politics across the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Colonial and judicial historians will find the book of interest. Plenty of bad behaviour, spicy ripostes, and cranky characters keep the narrative compelling, although occasionally, the dense details of the various spats can be difficult to disentangle. Despite excellent opening and concluding chapters, McLaren might have said more about several rich themes that he raises but never fully develops. I would have liked to read more about how judges acted as transmitters of legal culture, or the role that travel and transplantation played in influencing the legal ideas that judges carried in their (literal and figurative) baggage. More than simply “a series of ripping yarns of empire,” McLaren’s lively and engaging book effectively illustrates the need for a comparative and transnational perspective in understanding judicial law and politics in the colonial context (p. 273).