This paper explores the creation of the Egyptian Shari'a Supreme Court (al-Mahkama al-'Ulya al-Shar'yya), thereafter SSC, and its key role in managing Islamic judicial practice in the late 19th and early 20th century. I argue that the SSC is an example of a modern Islamic judicial institution that binds Muslim juristic scholarship with tight procedural requirements for dispensation of justice and emerging notions of public policy and procedural justice. The operations of the SSC demonstrate not only the centrality of the institutional apparatus––the Ministry of Justice, provincial shari'a courts, judges, and Shari'a Lawyers’ Bar Association––in fostering any potentiality for the shari'a as a system of governance but also the transfer of the authority of the Chief Judge––an Ottoman administrative judicial position that used to exercise oversight on shari'a courts––to this new institutional apparatus. It was through the creation of this higher court that Islamic judicial practice in lower courts across Egypt was readjusted to a set of evolving norms concerning internal coherence within the shari'a judicial practice, adoption of procedural rules to reflect the directives from the Ministry of Justice, and careful attention to the updated rules of evidence and appeal. To explore such dynamics, I center the Hanafi school of law in the operation of shari'a courts in Egypt until 1955 and I examine two court decisions with regard to the inheritance rights of patronate (wala' al-'itq) of manumitted slaves and their patrons.