John Walpole Willis was a controversial English judge. His early career in Canada and British Guiana was marked by controversy, in both public and private life, and quarrels with his colleagues.
Willis was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and arrived in Sydney in February 1838.
His outspokenness soon brought him into conflict with various social and religious groups, individual citizens, and his judicial colleagues including the chief justice, Sir James Dowling. To remove Willis from Sydney the governor, Sir George Gipps, appointed Willis as a resident judge for Port Phillip (Victoria).
Willis arrived in Melbourne on 10 March 1841 but was soon quarreling again with his fellow judges and with influential citizens, including the editors of the Port Phillip Gazette and the Herald newspapers. Calls for his removal were made and Governor Gipps ordered Willis from office on 17 June 1843.
Not all people in Melbourne were happy with Willis’ removal. John V. Barry notes in his entry for Willis in the Australian Dictionary of Biography that the proprietor of the Port Phillip Patriot newspaper, John Pascoe Fawkner, (even though he too had been on the receiving end of adverse comment from Willis) wrote that Willis ‘should not “be sacrificed to gratify the despicable clique from whose tyranny ... [Willis] had rescued the community”.’
John V. Barry writes that Willis ‘was an able lawyer, honest and fearless, and alert to prevent fraud and oppression, but he lacked the judicial temperament. Contentious and irascible, he could not work in harmony with the executive or with his colleagues… His temperament and outlook led inevitably to clashes with powerful sections [of the community].’
Willis returned to England and died in 1877.
Source: John V. Barry, 'Willis, John Walpole (1793–1877)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willis-john-walpole-2797/text3989, published in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 19 May 2014.
