Frederic Goadby's Introduction to the Study of Law, written for law students in British occupied Egypt and later Palestine, provides a significant record of colonial attitudes about Western law and the legal cultures encountered in the Middle East. Edward Said's Orientalism offers a deconstructive methodology which reveals the legal narrative of Goadby's work as offering an invitation to the students to become spectators, along with the colonists of their own legal culture. Once imbued with the spirit of English law, Egyptian and Palestinian students passed the test of civilisation. Goadby's book reminds us that while colonial occupation of territory may have ceased the impact of cultural occupations continue. For both coloniser and colonised this discourse becomes part of their legal inheritance, which creates much work for contemporary legal scholars.