Professor Robert Blackburn

Biography

Robert Blackburn KC LLD 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 London School of Economics and Leeds University, and holds degrees in the disciplines of Law, Political Science, and History. He is a Solicitor and before entering academic life practiced with a City law firm in the areas of property, medical and public law.

He regularly acts as an adviser to government bodies in the UK and abroad. He was Special Counsel to the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Commons in 2010-15, and consultant on Crown affairs for the Cabinet Office and Treasury Solicitor in 2014-15. He was UK Legal Consultant to the Council of Europe Directorate of Human Rights 1983-2008.

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

Professor Blackburn's public impact research on in the field of constitutional law was selected as one of the Impact Case Studies for the School of Law's Research Excellence Framework submission in 2014, contributing to the School being ranked first out of all University law departments in the country for the quality of its research.

Teaching

Professor Blackburn currently lectures on Advanced Constitutional Law and the core public law module in the Politics, Philosophy & Law LLB degree. He has taught specialist LLM courses on Theory and Practice of Parliament, Administrative Law, and English Constitutional History.

Research interests

Political and constitutional affairs.