I like a clamour : John Walpole Willis, colonial judge, reconsidered / Max Bonnell.

Annandale, N.S.W. : The Federation Press, 2017.

87361

Judges -- New South Wales -- Biography.

Introduction: Grimaces on the bench

1. Great disrespect and insult

2. The satisfaction of a gentleman

3. An attachment to Lady Mary

4. It is intended to commit that Jurisdiction to Mr Willis

5. You have not got your Equity Court yet

6. I dare say his Object will appear

7. An inferior situation

8. Little Insects

9. Dissolved, annulled, vacated and made void

10. No unfriendly feelings

11. We cannot be bound

12. He devours a pig or goat daily

13. My shattered constitution

14. The expression of my mortification

15. Neither of my colleagues particularly love me

16. Destroying the web of sophistry

17. Very gross rudeness

18. The most malignant and diabolical dispositions

19. A mean, lickspittle business

20. The gentlemen of the profession

21. A friend to free discussions

22. A vast and hitherto neglected, oppressed and deeply injured multitude

23. High and responsible situations

24. Circumstances have occurred

25. Over a glass of grog

26. The necessary directions

27. I like a clamour

Appendices.

"The controversial career of John Walpole Willis is re-evaluated in the first comprehensive study of his legal career. Willis, the fifth judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, served in three colonies, and in each place he wrestled with the role of the law in a rapidly-changing society. In Upper Canada, he confronted the colony's transition from an oligarchy into a nascent democracy; in his next posting, in British Guyana, he was responsible for helping the colony implement, and absorb the consequences of, the abolition of slavery. New South Wales, his final posting, presented unique legal problems as it evolved from a penal colony into a free settlement, and the new settlement at Port Phillip began to grow. To these troubled societies, Judge Willis brought an acute legal mind and a stormy personality - he was twice dismissed from his post by the local Governor. Earlier studies have tended to view him either as a wronged genius or a vain, deranged misfit. Max Bonnell, an experienced lawyer and Adjunct Professor of Law at Sydney University, has rediscovered Willis as a contradictory figure - Australia's first activist judge, who was nonetheless a stickler for the letter of the law; the author of several remarkably humane and enlightened judgments, who was capable of endorsing appalling cruelty; and a man who insisted upon decorum and propriety, yet was undone by his own conspicuous failures of self-control." -- Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9781760020866

xiv, 320 pages : illustrated ; 22 cm