Mr McKillop has a particular interest in continental justice systems and in recent years has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Aix-Marseille, Poitiers, La Rochelle and Rennes in France. He has participated in continuing legal education programmes for the French Judiciary in Paris and has lectured in Australian Law at the French University of the Pacific in Tahiti and Noumea. Mr McKillop is the author of some thirty articles, papers and reports on a diverse range of subjects. He is admitted to practise as a barrister at law in New South Wales and as an advocate and solicitor in Papua New Guinea. The judicial oath is to do right by all manner of persons, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.
Strict impartiality is of the essence of the administration of justice.
The public expect, from courts of justice, both the appearance and the reality of such impartiality. A judicial officer who has the duty to resolve disputes between citizens and the government, who holds office at the will of the government, and who could be dismissed for making a decision of which the government disapproved, would be unlikely to command the confidence of the public. Taking for granted the need for the judiciary to be independent, most people, including many in public life, never take the trouble to examine in any detail what the concept of judicial independence involves. That the courts as institutions, and judges and magistrates as individuals, should be independent is regarded as being so obvious that few people ever ask themselves what independence entails, and what conditions are necessary, or desirable, for its preservation. Judicial officers sometimes assert, as though they were self-evident, propositions about independence which would be challenged by parliamentarians or public servants.