Thomas Martin Partington, CBE, KC (Hon), FAcSS (born 5 March 1944) is a British retired legal scholar and barrister. He is Emeritus professor of Law at the University of Bristol.^[1][2]

He has over 45 years' experience as a law teacher, researcher, and writer on a wide variety of legal subjects (including administrative justice, legal education, and the English legal system), a (part-time) legal practitioner, legal policy adviser, and a law reformer. He taught at the Universities of Bristol, Warwick, the London School of Economics, and Brunel University.^[3]

He was associated with a wide range of bodies and institutions including, at different stages in his career, and for different lengths of time: the Hillfields Advice Centre in Coventry; the Legal Action Group; the Training Committee of the Institute of Housing; the Management Committees of Citizens' Advice Bureaux in Coventry, Paddington, and Uxbridge; the Education Committee of the Law Society; the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Aid; the Independent Tribunal Service for Social Security Appeal Tribunals; the Judicial Studies Board (both the main Board and its Tribunals Committee); the Council on Tribunals; the Civil Justice Council (and its sub-committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution); the Committee of Heads of University Law schools; the Socio-Legal Studies Association; and the Socio-Legal Research Users' Forum.

For a number of years he was Training Adviser to the then President of Social Security Appeal Tribunals and also sat as a part-time Social Security Tribunals chairman.

He acted as an expert adviser to the Council of Europe, examining Alternatives to Litigation in Disputes between the Individual and the State.^[4] In May 2000, he was appointed expert consultee to the Review of Tribunals, set up by the Lord Chancellor and chaired by Sir Andrew Leggatt. He was a member of the Gaymer Review of Industrial Tribunals, 2002.

From 2001 to 2005, he was a Law Commissioner for England and Wales; he was retained as a Special Consultant to the Commission from 2006 to 2008.

He is currently a member of the Executive Board of JUSTICE and of the Civil Justice Councilworking party on housing dispute resolution. He chairs the Board of the Dispute Service, a company under contract with government to provide tenancy deposit protection and dispute resolution.^[5]

Honours

In 2002 he was appointed CBE; in 2006 he was elected as a Bencher of Middle Temple; in 2008 he was appointed QC (Hon). In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences,^[6] and awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association's prize for Contributions to the Socio-Legal Community.

Bibliography

• Landlord and Tenant:  Cases, Materials and Text (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975; 2nd ed. 1980.)
• Taxing the Brain Drain,  Vol.I.  "A Proposal" (ed. with J Bhagwati) (North-Holland, 1976)
• Welfare Rights: A Bibliography on Law and the Poor, 1970– 1975 (Frances Pinter, 1976) (with John Hull and Susan Knight)
• Claim in Time: A Study of the Time-Limit Rules for Claiming Social Security Benefits (Frances Pinter, 1978) (2nd ed., published by Legal Action Group, 1989; 3rd ed. 1994)
• Welfare Law and Policy (ed. with Jeffrey Jowell) (Frances Pinter, 1979)
• Quiet Enjoyment (LAG, 1980) (1st ed. 1980 – 6th ed. 2002) (with Andrew Arden QC)
• Housing Law (Sweet & Maxwell, 1983) (with Andrew Arden)
• Bibliography of Social Security Law (Mansell, 1986) (with P. O'Higgins)
• Housing Law, Cases Materials and Commentary (1991, Sweet and Maxwell) (with J Hill)
• Housing Law (2nd ed., 1994, Sweet and Maxwell) (further updating releases annually) (with A Arden QC and C Hunter)
• Council on Tribunals Annual Reports: Annotated Index, 1959–1993 (1st ed. 1994, University of Bristol) (with M Chapman, and M Fletcher)
• Administrative Justice: A Working Bibliography (1st ed, 1996, University of Bristol) (with M Chapman, M Harris, and M Fletcher)
• “United Kingdom” in International Encyclopedia of Laws; Social Security (Kluwer Law International, 1st ed. 1998 – 4th ed. April 2012)
• Administrative Justice in the 21st Century (Hart Publishers, 1999) (with Michael Harris)
• English Legal System: An Introduction to the (1st ed., Oxford UP, 2000 – 11th ed., Oxford UP, 2016)
• Law in the real World: the Nuffield Inquiry on Empirical Research on Law (London, Nuffield Foundation, 2006) (with Hazel Genn and Sally Wheeler)
• Law's Reality: Case Studies in Empirical Research on Law (Editor) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) Special Research Issue of the Journal of Law and Society
• Halsbury’s Laws of England Legal aid Volume 65 (Consulting Editor) (2008)
• Halsbury’ Laws of England Courts and Tribunals Volume 24 (Joint Consulting Editor) (2010)
• The Development of Professional Legal and Judicial Education in Qatar, (2012) Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre, Doha) (with Chloë Smythe)
• Developing Professional Legal Education in Qatar, (Pre-consultation paper and questionnaire) (2013) Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre, Doha) (with Chloë Smythe)

References