After a call girl is found dead in a skip, an Arab sheikh's chauffeur is charged with killing her, but the evidence points to the sheikh himself being involved in the murder. Unfortunately for Deed, the Arab ruler was in London to place a huge order with a British aircraft manufacturer, and pressure is piled on Deed by the British government, as well as by the sheikh's own. The plot thickens when counsel for the prosecution is also killed and Deed's lover, Jo Mills, takes over the case, and when he hears that Georgina Channing, his former wife, is engaged to marry Neil Haughton, the government minister fighting for the aeroplane order. Before long, witnesses disappear and the jury is being interfered with - by the British Government, no less. And then Deed gets an offer they think he can't refuse, when appointment as an Appeal Court judge is dangled before him.

Deed rekindles his old love affair with Francesca Rochester, and at first he fails to notice that she is making use of him in a struggle with her dotty aunt for power over a property and publishing empire. Francesca's husband Ian and another enemy set out to undermine the Judge's credibility, aiming to have him removed from office.In court, Deed is busy presiding over a murder trial in which a young lawyer and his brother and sister are charged with conspiring with a burglar to kill their parents. Meanwhile, the judge's student daughter Charlie has got herself pregnant by a married lecturer at her college. Charlie's mother persuades her to have an abortion, which Deed is against, but he finds out about it too late. We discover that Deed bitterly regrets Jo's decision years before to abort his own child.

Jo Mills leads for the prosecution and Brian Cantwell for the defence when a British member of parliament, Alan Roxborough, is tried on a charge of attempting to murder his boyfriend with a frying pan. As usual, there is a conspiracy in the background to pervert the course of justice, which may be connected to Roxborough's opposition to certain British arms deals.Meanwhile, Deed goes into therapy and has a brief affair with his therapist.

The case of Diana Hulsey, a single mother with terminal brain cancer who is suing a telephone company, is concluded in Deed's court. The Establishment dreads a verdict in Diana's favour, and Ian Rochester is yet again out to discredit the judge before he can deliver judgement. Rochester conspires with the phone company to accuse Deed of possessing child pornography, and Deed has to work out what to do when he finds it on his laptop.Meanwhile, Jo faces a conundrum when Diana asks her to look after her seven-year-old son when she is dead, which could be at any moment.

Jo Mills was planning to take time off work, but then she agrees to defend a man who escaped trial sixteen years before after he was charged with attempted murder. Jo is partly attracted to the case because she recognizes two of the detectives who are mixed up in it.

Deed has an environmental case before him, in which a company operating a large-scale waste incinerator is accused of damaging people's health by air pollution. Jo Mills represents the parents of a damaged child, but is losing. Then it comes out that the company deliberately hid a fault at the incinerator which made its emissions far worse. Meanwhile, Rufus Barron comes up with evidence to support the claim that Neil Haughton took a bribe on a defence contract. Then the evidence is lost, and Haughton demands that Deed should be impeached for unprofessional conduct.

An angry contestant in a TV show kills another competitor on camera, and the show's producers face charges of manslaughter in Deed's court. Meanwhile, Deed is pressing for an inquiry into the death of Rufus Barron, a man who had been accused of embezzling money from his employer, the arms dealer Sir Tim Listfield. Sir Tim becomes violent when Deed keeps questioning the 'accident' which killed Barron.

In a case in Deed's court, his daughter Charlie is the junior counsel defending Henry Free - an animal rights activist charged with murder after a fire-bomb at an animal research unit killed an eminent scientist. Then Henry falls out with his leading counsel and asks Charlie to defend him - but Deed advises her not to. Part of Free's defence is that his group had been infiltrated by an officer of MI5, the British secret service, acting as an agent provocateur, and Deed is angry when Charlie reveals the officer's identity in court.

Meanwhile, Jo is helping and encouraging Charlie - and she is back with her old flame, Marc Thompson. Deed is losing her.

Deed has to judge a case concerning Jo's boyfriend, Marc Thompson. Marc wants to take the decision not to resuscitate a two-year old patient at his hospital who has a weak heart and is in a coma, if the child's heart stops again, but the parents disagree.

In another case, Deed has to sentence a young thief, and the youth then dies in custody. All this brings back Deed's memories of his own traumatic childhood. He is spoiling for a fight and argues with Jo - who announces that she has decided to marry Marc.

In court, Deed has to judge the case of a couple who are fighting their local council over a police communications mast on the roof of the building they live in. Gilly Bridges has motor-neurone disease, while her husband Jake has stomach cancer, which they claim are connected with the 'tetra' mast. The incidence of both diseases in the Bridges' block of flats is many times the statistical norm. Jo represents Jake and Gilly Bridges, while Deed's former wife George appears for the defendant council.

Then Deed receives an application from Rose Hussein, the English wife of a former government minister from Iraq. Rose believes depleted uranium used by the British Army in its tank shells killed her family - and she wants the court to establish the facts. Of course, the government doesn't want the case to be heard.

In Deed's court, Jo Mills acts for a mother whose former husband, Paul Robson-Alan, wants their baby to be given the 'MMR' vaccination. Robson-Alan is a British Government health adviser, and the outcome of the case is important to the political credibility of the Health Department. But Paul's ex-wife, Marika, believes the MMR jab is dangerous - and some dramatic new evidence is produced on that.

Meanwhile, Jo's wedding to Marc is still on, but she is so busy that she forgets to turn up for the rehearsal of the service. Jo is angry with Deed when he forces her to attend a legal meeting on the morning of the wedding itself. Will she get to the altar on time, and will she go through with it?

Deed's involvement in the case of a far-right British National Party councilor brings him to the notice of terrorists who decide to send a woman to kill him. When the assassin meets Deed, she has a surprise in store, but she still plans to carry out her orders.

Meanwhile, The Lord Chancellor sends Deed to sit on an International Tribunal in the Hague, as the British government sees him as a mischief maker at home. Deed finds himself judging the case of a British soldier accused of war crimes by killing eleven Iraqi civilians.