In August 2015, Tomkins announced his intention to stand as a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish Conservatives in the 2016 elections. In a blog explaining his decision, he was highly critical of the Scottish National Party’s actions in government at Holyrood, and praised many policies of the Conservative government at Westminster. He was elected a list member of the Scottish Parliament for the Glasgow Region in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. He sits on the Finance Committee and the Social Security Committee in the Scottish Parliament.

From British Library catalogue (Accessed October 2015).

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum Tomkins was a leading unionist campaigner.

Tomkins has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Toronto, Queensland and New South Wales and the Australian National University, and has lectured throughout the world. In April 2009, Tomkins became associated with Ampersand, a stable at the Faculty of Advocates, as part of its Ampersand Academics link between practitioners and academics. Professor Douglas Brodie, former head of the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, has also joined this project. In 2009 he was appointed legal adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.

Tomkins has published seven books in the areas of constitutional, administrative and European Union law, including two, Public Law (2003) and British Government and the Constitution (2007, with Colin Turpin), which are amongst the most widely used by law students in the United Kingdom.

Tomkins was educated at Gillingham School, the University of East Anglia (LL.B., 1990) and the London School of Economics (LL.M., 1991). He taught at the School of Law of King’s College London between 1991 and 2000 and became a fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford in 2000, before being elected to the John Millar Chair of Law at Glasgow in 2003. His research interests lie in constitutional theory and history, British, EU and comparative constitutional law.

Adam Tomkins (born 28 June 1969) is an English academic and politician based in Scotland. He is the John Millar Professor of Public Law at the University of Glasgow School of Law and was elected a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. He is shadow cabinet secretary for communities, social security, the constitution and equalities. Until 2015 Tomkins was constitutional advisor to the House of Lords Constitution Committee. From 2015 he has acted as constitutional advisor to the Scotland Office and Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell.