[jason taylor]

Law of Hot-trod:

My Heroes Country rather then Imperial. If a crime is committed to far from government reach for an appeal to be made, the chief executive official(starship captain, captain of an on-planet venture, outpost factor, etc) has a standing warrant to act in-lieu of the government until the emergency has passed, subject to board of inquiry. To put it another way, they have a right to activate their naval reserve rank on certain conditions, subject to review. Minor government officials in the same situation have the same warrant. For instance if a member of the crew of a trade-scout or frontier merchant is kidnapped, the captain has a right to form a warband and lead it against the kidnappers until the captive is rescued. What he does not have the right to do is pursue a drawn out private vendatta long after the urgency of the situation is over. This, by the way, is one reason for insisting that master's licences for long-range frontier merchants are only given to Patricians who have thus been schooled in the same background as Patricians who went into government service. It is intended not only that they have a minimum of skills but the ethos to not go to far. The second is more of a problem then the first in fact; many frontier merchants from my heroes country are skilled warriors in their own right, but a few are rather loose with the disciplines of civilization.
Naturally there are Imperial counterparts to this law, Imperials having to live on a frontier too. Many of these are mentioned in canon, though local customs go through rather tangled convolutions.

The term "Hot-Trod" by the way was gotten from Anglo-Scottish border-law. Under this a clan was allowed to form it's own posse for four-days after a cattle-raid with the approval of the law.