How is the “rule of law” experienced during a political revolution? Focusing on the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and its aftermath, this paper explores how judges and legal activists have negotiated the post-revolutionary landscape, a period characterized by political instability, the securitization of public space, and an aggressive valorization of the “popular will”. While conventional political science methodologies have presented these political formations as incompatible with the rule of law, my research suggests the opposite to be the case. Drawing on more than six months of field work in Cairo and a mix of interviews, media, and court decisions, I show that judicial personnel have developed a repertoire of techniques and rhetorical devices designed to defend a conception of the “rule of law” even in so seemingly inhospitable terrain. My primary focus in this paper is on one judicial technique in particular: the legal technicality. Following Honig (2009) and Comaroff and Comaroff (2011), I define a technicality as a resource present within the law, but, when exploited, negates or transcends the law’s accepted meaning. In postcolonial contexts, where multiple legal traditions and judiciaries occupy the same political space, opportunities for legal technicalities tend to proliferate. As a result, they provide a potent tool for judicial personnel intent on introducing new legal meanings into places where the politics of emergency is ascendant. Understood in this fashion, I show how technicalities have become one of the principle tools of Egypt’s administrative judiciary, the Majlis al-Dawla (State Council). Judges on these courts have heard a number of key post-revolutionary cases, particularly on matters related to the sale of public property, the behavior of government officials, and the scope of executive power. Faced with the difficult task of defending the rule of law amidst extreme popular and political pressure, these judges have intentionally adopted highly technical and tendentious readings of Egyptian law, often relying on procedural “sleight-of-hand” to achieve their preferred results. While this practice is easy to malign or dismiss, I argue that it actually stems from a desire to maintain the rule of law in the face of overwhelming popular pressure. This suggests a much more complex relationship between the “rule of law” and the politics of emergency and revolution than is often assumed, particularly in the judicial politics literature. Thus, this paper helps to uncover signs of law’s adaptability, even in the harshest and least promising of circumstances.