I just spent the past week or so "eye-guzzling" the British period police drama "Foyle's War" (via netflix).

The relevance of this show to my post subject line (and thence to Traveller) is that it slowly dawned upon me over the course of its nine seasons that this show is a fairly good model of rule by functionaries (e.g. Patrons) and mustered-out veterans (e.g. PCs) who tend to take the law as a guideline or perhaps merely a suggestion. While the series central character of Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle starts out applying the law rather inflexibly, the fact that he does so serves as (I think deliberate) contrast with the more laizze-faire attitude of other characters. And toward the end of the series, even Foyle becomes (if reluctantly) somewhat flexible.

There's one story arc in particular in the final season that shows what I'm talking about very well. The Significant Other of a certain continuing character - one whose official job is merely as an assistant (as in the "clerk typist" sort, not the Assistant To Somebody sort) in the bowels of MI5 - becomes implicated in a police frame-up. Advised that "there is nothing we can do," the assistant's reply is, "I think you've forgotten who I work for." The secretary organizes a trap for the corrupt police official who set the frame, with muscle for said trap provided by some bored very-recently-ex commandos previously met casually. All of it is completely off-the-books and actually violates several laws (among them the Official Secrets Act IIRC) . . . but photographs of said police official accepting stolen goods just *happen* to end up in appropriate hands.
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