Ronald St. John Macdonald

Who was Ronald St. John Macdonald?

Ronald St. John Macdonald, CC was a Canadian legal academic and jurist.

Born in Montreal, the son of R. St. John Macdonald and Elizabeth Smith, he served as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. When he returned to Canada he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949 from St. Francis Xavier University, a Bachelor of Law degree in 1952 from Dalhousie Law School, and two Master of Law degrees, from the University of London in 1954, and from Harvard Law School in 1955. He then began a long legal academic career at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Toronto, and finally Dalhousie University. He was also Dean of Law at the University of Toronto from 1967 to 1972 and at Dalhousie University from 1972 to 1979.

He was the only non-European judge of the European Court of Human Rights, where he served from 1980 to 1998. He was the first Westerner appointed as Honorary Professor of Law at China's Peking University. He is the founding President of the Canadian Council on International Law and was President of the World Academy of Arts and Science from 1983 to 1987.