Trevor Robert Seaward Allan,[1] LLD FBA (born 9 May 1955) is Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is known for challenging constitutional orthodoxy in the United Kingdom, particularly in his redefinition of the scope of parliamentary sovereignty.[2]
Allan was educated at St Albans School and Worcester College, Oxford, where he received a MA in Jurisprudence and a BCL. He also holds a LLD from Cambridge University. He was called to the London Bar at Middle Temple.
He was a lecturer in law at the University of Nottingham between 1980 and 1985 and joined the University of Cambridge in 1989. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2016.[3][4]
His books include Constitutional Justice: A Liberal Theory of the Rule of Law (OUP), Law, Liberty, and Justice: The Legal Foundations of British Constitutionalism (Clarendon Paperback), and the Sovereignty of Law: Freedom, Constitution, and Common Law (OUP).[5]
Allan's view is that the rule of law occupies a superior position to parliamentary sovereignty in the constitutional hierarchy. He develops this view in The Sovereignty of Law: Freedom, Constitution and Common Law.[6]