This chapter considers the first cases arising from African detentions in which courts in London considered the legality of ad hominem ordinances. The first case taken to the Privy Council was that of the Mpondo chief, Sigcau, who was detained in Griqualand East in 1895. Although the Privy Council rejected the Cape government’s appeal from Chief Justice de Villiers’s decision to free him, it confirmed that a sovereign legislature could authorise ad hominem detention laws. In the second case, that of chief Sekgoma Letsholathibe, the Court of Appeal upheld a detention proclamation, rejecting arguments which claimed that the detainee had common law rights confirmed by Magna Carta, by holding that parliament had validly delegated its legislative power through the Foreign Jurisdiction Act. In the third case, that of Saad Zaghlul Pasha, the Privy Council also rejected a claim for common law rights of liberty, on the ground that, in crown colonies, the crown had full power to detain under its prerogative. These cases show that, when questions of the liberty of Africans came before English judges, they opted for a formal vision of rule by law over a substantive vision of the rule of law.