Sir James Shaw Willes (1814 – 2 October 1872) was a Judge of the English Court of Common Pleas.
When he was forty-one years old, he was appointed a puisne judge of the Common Pleas, receiving the honour of knighthood at the same time.
[1] "He was esteemed one of the wisest and most learned of English lawyers, displaying in his decisions not only a rare and profound knowledge of principles, but a wonderful power of dealing with complicated facts and evidence.
He killed himself, at his residence near Watford, Hertfordshire while suffering under temporary aberration of mind, the result of suppressed gout, aged about 58.
[2] Willes is arguably most famous as the judge in Phillips v Eyre (1870) LR 6 QB and for the double actionability rule which arose from that case.