Ram was born in Belgravia on 24 June 1885; his father, John Abel Ram, KC, practised at the parliamentary bar and specialised in local government matters; his mother, Mary Grace, was the daughter of the Irish peer Lucius O'Brien, 13th Baron Inchiquin.
[1][2] After schooling at Eton, Ram went up to Exeter College, Oxford, and graduated in 1909; he then spent a year as a pupil in H. A. McCardie's chambers before being called to the bar in 1910.
He was commissioned into the Hertfordshire Yeomanry in 1910,[3] and served in Egypt, Gallipoli and France with them during the First World War, rising to the rank of Captain.
[1][4] With the war over, in 1919 he entered the civil service without competition and was appointed a junior solicitor to the Ministry of Labour.
His 1945 memorandum on the eponymous Ram doctrine has become a famous explanation of the UK government's common law powers.