James Allan

James Allan (born 1960) is a Canadian-Australian law professor and writer. He is the Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland.

Allan has degrees from Queen's University, the London School of Economics and the University of Hong Kong. He qualified as a barrister and solicitor with The Law Society of Ontario in 1988. Prior to his appointment at the University of Queensland, Allan taught at the University of Otago.

As a legal scholar, Allan is well-known for his opposition to bills of rights.

Allan writes opinion pieces in The Australian newspaper. He is author of Democracy in Decline: Steps in the Wrong Direction, occasional contributor to Quadrant magazine and The Spectator and editor of the University of Queensland Law Journal. Allan has spoken at CPAC. During the constitutional debate regarding an indigenous "voice" to Parliament, Allan observed that Indigenous Australians are, on a per-capita basis, already overrepresented in the Parliament of Australia. In the context of a free speech discussion, Allan observed "Kanye [an African American] is a brave man. He and his girlfriend were wearing shirts that say white lives matter, and he's taken a bit of heat for that."