UQ law graduate Professor Ross Cranston QC is a Justice of the High Court of England and Wales.

Professor Cranston graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours from The University of Queensland in 1972 and continued his studies abroad, completing a Master of Laws at Harvard University and a PhD at Oxford.

An academic lawyer with an interest in politics, Professor Cranston has held a number of prominent positions in the United Kingdom including being: a Labour MP (1997-2005); Solicitor-General (1998-2001); Centennial Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2005-2007); and Lubbock Professor of Banking Law and Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary and Westfield College.

He has held consultancies with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He has also undertaken peer reviews of legal systems for the European Commission in Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey.

In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy, the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.

Professor Cranston said he was grateful for the legal education he received at UQ.

"I received a very firm foundation in a whole range of doctrinal law, as well as the basics of contract, tort, equity and public law," he said.

"Many lawyers in England just don’t have anything like this and that's why Australian lawyers are still greatly prized in City of London law firms."

He stood down from the House of Commons in 2005.