The constituency returned one Member of Parliament, using the first past the post electoral system.
From 1918 all graduates qualified, including women over thirty (reduced to twenty one when universal adult suffrage on equal terms was introduced before the 1929 United Kingdom general election).
The original proposal of the Speaker's Conference, which considered electoral reform before the Representation of the People Act 1918 was enacted, was to combine all the English and Welsh universities except for Oxford and Cambridge into a three-member constituency.
However, during consideration of the legislation it was agreed that London University should continue to return one member.
This is a list of people who have represented this university in the Parliament of the United Kingdom between 1868 and 1950.