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Ronald Saint John Macdonald (born 20). August 1928 in Montreal; † September 7, 2006 in Halifax, Nova Scotia was a Canadian lawyer who focused primarily on maritime law and human rights. He worked, among other things, from 1961 to 1972 as a professor at the University of Toronto and from 1972 to 1990 at the Dalhousie University in Halifax and served at both universities temporarily as dean. He was also the only non-European judge at the European Court of Human Rights from 1980 to 1998. From 1979 he belonged to the Institut de Droit internationally and received honorary doctorates from several universities and in 2000 with the acceptance as a companion in the Order of Canada the highest civilian award of his home country.

Live life
Ronald St. John Macdonald was born in 1928 as a descendant of Scottish emigrants in Montreal. He received a B.A. degree from Saint Francis Xavier University in 1949 and a Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University in Halifax in 1952. In addition, he received a Master of Laws degree at the University of London in 1954 and a year later at Harvard University.

He graduated from 1955 to 1957 as a lecturer and from 1957 to 1959 as a professor at York University, from 1959 to 1961 as a professor at the University of Western Ontario, from 1961 to 1972 as a professor at the University of Toronto and from 1972 to 1990 as a professor of international law at Dalhousie University. At the University of Toronto he worked from 1967 to 1972 also as Dean of the Law School, from 1972 to 1979 he worked in the same function at Dalhousie University. In 1990 he returned to the University of Toronto, where he remained as a Senior Scholar in Residence until 1994. He also taught at the Hague Academy of International Law and was the first visiting professor of international law at the University of Beijing.

In addition to his academic work, he served as legal adviser to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Ministry of his home country and had influence on Canadian foreign policy in this role, especially during the term of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He also represented Canada on several occasions in the United Nations General Assembly and at various international conferences. In the 1970s, he assisted the Government of the Republic of Cyprus as a special adviser on the revision of the constitution of the country following the occupation of the northern part of the island of Cyprus by Turkey in July 1974 in the context of the Cyprus conflict.

From 1980 to 1998 he was also a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. He was nominated by Liechtenstein, which, like all States Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights, is entitled to a judgeship at the ECHR. In the history of the Court, he was the only judge to date