Personal profile
Personal profile
My academic career began in 1966, soon after my graduation from the University of Southampton (which awarded me a Higher Doctorate in 2017). I taught politics and public administration in the Sociology Department at Bedford College and then, after the college merger, at Royal Holloway, based latterly in what by then had become the PIR Department, until my (semi) retirement in 2009. I was appointed to a Readership in Social Administration in 1984 and to a Chair in Public Administration in 1988; from 1992 to 1996 I was Head of the Department of Social and Political Science. I am Emeritus Professor of Public Administration and an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway and have maintained very close links both with PIR and more generally with the College.
I am a former Chair of the Study of Parliament Group; I was appointed to an Honorary Professorship in the Faculty of Laws at UCL in 1996; I have been a member of the Council of Administration of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences since 2004; and I was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2008.
My research interests have focussed, in particular, on the inter-relationships between politics, public administration and public law. I have published, as editor or author, 16 books (listed below) and more than 120 academic articles and book chapters – mainly on legal institutions and the administration of legal services, on administrative justice, on parliamentary select committees and on the legislative process. In recent years, I have been an active member of the IIAS international Project Group on Administrative History. And I have a longstanding interest in the political and constitutional implications of capital punishment.
Books (in descending date order)
- Editor (with Alexander Horne and Dawn Oliver), Parliament and the Law (Hart Publishing, 2013; second edition (co-edited with Alexander Horne), 2018)
- Editor (with Sir Louis Blom-Cooper and Brice Dickson), The Judicial House of Lords 1876-2009 (Oxford University Press, 2009)
- Author (with Sir Louis Blom-Cooper and Charles Blake) Court of Appeal. (Hart Publishing 2007);
- Editor(with Carsten Greve and Thierry Tanquerel) Contracts, Performance Measurement and Accountability in the Public Sector (Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2005);
- Editor (with Philip Giddings), Britain in the European Union: Law Policy and Parliament (Palgrave, 2004);
- Editor (with Charles Blake), Law, and the Spirit of Inquiry, Kluwer Law International, 1999;
- Editor (with Dawn Oliver), The Law and Parliament, Butterworths, 1998;
- Author (with Dawn Oliver), Public Service Reforms: Issues of Accountability and Public Law (Pinter, 1996);
- Editor (with Philip Giddings), Westminster and Europe (Macmillan, 1996);
- Author (with Tony Butcher) The Civil Service Today (Blackwell, 1988, 2nd edition 1991);
- Editor/principal contributor, The New Select Committees (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 1989);
- Editor (with Dermot Englefield), Information Sources in Politics and Political Science: A Survey Worldwide (Butterworths, 1984)
- Author, Law, Justice and Politics (Longman, 2nd edition, 1981);
- Author (with Ivor Burton), Legislation and Public Policy (Macmillan, 1981);
- Author (with Louis Blom‑Cooper), Law and Morality (Duckworths, 1976);
- Author (with Louis Blom‑Cooper), Final Appeal: A Study of the House of Lords in its Judicial Capacity (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972).
External positions
Visiting Research Fellow, University of Westminster
1 Oct 2009 → …
Honorary Professor, Faculty of Laws, UCL
1 Oct 1996 → …