Francis Bennion

Who is Francis Bennion?

Francis Alan Roscoe Bennion is a barrister in the United Kingdom. He is the author of several leading UK legal texts, including in particular Bennion on Statutory Interpretation.

Bennion was born at Wallasey in Cheshire, the only son of Thomas Roscoe Bennion and his wife Ellen Norah Bennion. He was educated at The John Lyon School in Harrow, London from 1934 to 1939, and attended one year St Andrews University in 1941 before joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He served in the Second World War as a Coastal Command pilot in No. 221 Squadron RAF from 1941 to 1946.

After his war service, he returned to study law at Balliol College, Oxford in 1946. He was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in January 1951, and practised as a barrister in England from 1951 to 1965, including eight years as Parliamentary Counsel from 1953 to 1965, when he drafted constitutions for Pakistan and for Ghana following independence from the UK.

He left his practise at the bar from 1965 to 1973, spending three years as the Chief Executive of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; then, after being a co-founder of the Professional Association of Teachers in 1968, he was its first chairman from 1968 to 1972.