William Flood Webb was born in Brisbane, Queensland on 21 January 1887. He attended St Mary's Convent School in Warwick, Queensland where he excelled academically. Webb was ranked second in the Queensland Public Service examination and began working in the Home Secretary's Department on 3 February 1904. He gained a law degree from the University of Queensland and passed the bar examination on 20 May 1913 with an exceptionally high average of 71.5 per cent. Webb was admitted to the Queensland Bar on 4 June 1913.

Webb served as Crown Solicitor and Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department for Queensland from 1917 to 1922. During this time, he married Beatrice Agnew on the 17 March 1917 at the Sacred Heart Church, Sandgate. He was appointed as Queensland Solicitor-General from 1922 to 1925. In 1925 he was appointed as Judge to the Supreme Court of Queensland and President of the Court of Industrial Arbitration. Following this he served as Chairman of the Central Sugar Cane Prices Board from 1926 to 1942, and Chairman of the Australian Industrial Relations Council, 1942 to 1943. From 1940 to 1946 Webb succeeded as the Chief Justice for Queensland. Webb was appointed Chairman to a number of Royal Commissions which included inquiries into the Traveston Railway Disaster in 1925, transport in 1936, sugar industry in 1938, and communication censorship in 1944.

On 23 June 1943, Webb was commissioned under National Security Regulations to report on whether there had been atrocities or breaches of warfare committed by the Japanese military forces. On 15 March 1944, he presented the "Summary of the Report on Japanese Atrocities and breaches of the rules of warfare" to the Australian Government. This was the first of three commissions given to Webb between 1943 and 1945 to investigate war crimes by the Japanese. Webb visited England in 1944 to present his findings to the United Nations War Crimes Commission. In May 1946 Webb was appointed as a Justice of the High Court of Australia where he remained on the bench until his retirement in 1958. His first case was Nelungaloo Pty Ltd v. Commonwealth. For this case, he interrupted his sittings in Tokyo so that it could be heard in the Full High Court in June to July 1947.

Webb's experience in the investigation of war crimes resulted in his subsequent appointment to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946 as the Australian member and also as the President of the Tribunal. The proceedings took two and a half years with judgement handed down in late 1948. On Friday 12 November 1948, Sir William Webb pronounced sentences on those whom the Tribunal had found guilty. Webb described Tribunal as the most 'important criminal trial in all history'.

Upon Webb's return to Australia, he resumed his position as Justice of the High Court of Australia. Webb sat in more than fifty important constitutional cases, including the succession of transport cases involving section 92 of the Constitution, and the second pharmaceutical benefits case in 1949. Following his retirement from the High Court in 1958, Webb chaired the Committee on Ministerial and Parliamentary Allowances in Tasmania in 1960 and in Queensland in 1962 and 1963. He also chaired the Electric Power Transmission Pty Ltd from 1958 until his death in Brisbane on 11 August in 1972. He was survived by two sons and four daughters.

Webb was created a Knight Bachelor in 1942 and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1954. In 1967, the University of Queensland awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws, for outstanding contribution to jurisprudence. Webb died in Brisbane on 11 August 1972. His portrait by Archibald Colquhoun hangs in the High Court Building in Canberra.

1. Ritchie J , Melbourne University Press, 2002. 2. Black A & C, Europa, London.