Professor Robert Blackburn KC

Robert Blackburn KC LLD is a is a leading authority on UK and comparative constitutional law. He has been Professor of Constitutional Law at King's since 1997 and was appointed Honorary King's Counsel in 2016.

He is a graduate of University of Leeds and London School of Economics and holds degrees in the disciplines of Law, Political Science, and History. Prior to entering academic life, he qualified as a Solicitor and practiced with a Lincoln's Inn law firm.

He regularly serves as an adviser to government bodies in the UK and abroad. He was Special Counsel to the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for its inquiry into how a written constitution for the UK could work, and he has acted as a consultant on constitutional affairs for the Cabinet Office on many occasions. He was formerly UK National Correspondent to the Council of Europe Directorate of Human Rights.

Professor Blackburn's research in the field of constitutional law reform has contributed to successive Research Excellence Framework submissions of the King's Law School, including an Impact Case Study in 2014 that was a factor in the School being ranked first out of all University law departments in the country for the quality of its research.

Professor Blackburn has extensive experience of senior managerial work across the university. In the School of Law, he has served as Acting and Deputy Dean, Chairman of the Board of Examiners, and Director of Postgraduate Studies. He currently manages King’s partnership in the London University External Degree Programme in Law.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of Halsbury's Laws of England, the definitive multi-volume work of reference for the legal profession, to which he has contributed its titles on Constitutional and Administrative Law, Parliament, and Crown and Royal Family.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Teaching

Courses designed and taught have included Advanced Constitutional Law (LLB), Government & Law (LLB, PPL programme), Theory and Practice of Parliament (LLM), and English Constitutional History (MA/LLM). He designed the Politics & Contemporary History MA programme, now taught in Political Economy.

Research interests

Political and constitutional affairs.

PURE profile 

For more information on Professor Blackburn's research, visit his research portal.