Governor Ralph Darling held that the terms of his commission placed Dowling next in precedence to the chief justice, Francis Forbes, while John Stephen, the other judge, said that in England such questions were decided by seniority.

In June 1832, he found it necessary to defend his judgment in a particular case which had been criticised in letters printed in the Sydney Monitor, and was assured by Viscount Goderich that he would not permit himself "to entertain even a momentary impression to his prejudice".

Following the brutal killing of 28 unarmed Aboriginal Australians in the Myall Creek massacre on 10 June 1838, Dowling presided over the first trial in which a jury acquitted eleven colonists of the murder of one person, referred to as Daddy.

[5] Dowling also sat in the Full Bench which determined questions of law following the conviction of seven colonists of the murder of two children and an adult referred to as Charley.

[6] In June 1843, Dowling expressed his willingness to act as speaker of the new Legislative Council, but Gipps ruled against this as he considered it would not be in the public interest.

[3] At the time of his death, Dowling was preparing a volume of law reports of the decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.