Constitutional Law and Freedom of Speech
Professor Adam Tomkins started his academic career in 1991 at King’s College London, before moving to Oxford, where he was a fellow at St Catherine’s College. He took up the John Millar Chair of Public Law at the University of Glasgow in 2003. From 2009-15 he was the legal adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee; in 2014 he was a member of the Smith Commission (which devised how Scottish devolution should be reformed after the Scottish independence referendum); and from 2015-16 he was the constitutional adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland. In 2016 Professor Tomkins was elected as a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. He did not seek re-election in 2021 and returned full-time to the University of Glasgow, where he is now under contract to write a book to be called On the Law of Speaking Freely. In 2014 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.