Ronald J. Allen is an American lawyer and the John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern University.
Allen completed his B.S. in 1970 from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. He then received his J.D. in 1973 from the University of Michigan Law School. He taught law at institutes such as the University of Nebraska and State University of New York at Buffalo in the 1970s. He became Professor of Law at Northwestern University in 1984. Since 1992, he has been the John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern University.
Allen is considered as one of the world’s most distinguished scholars in the fields of evidence and procedure. His work has been critically important to the efforts to reform the legal system of the People’s Republic of China. For several years, he has been responsible for hosting and supervising the study and research of Chinese law faculty and students at Northwestern University.
In 2007, Allen was designated as a Yangtze River Scholar, the highest academic honor given by the People’s Republic of China. He became only the fourth American to receive this award, and the first law professor, domestic or foreign, to be so honored.