Roderick A. Macdonald

Roderick A. Macdonald died of cancer on 13 June 2014. He was 66. He was the F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the McGill University Faculty of Law. He was the founding President of the Law Commission of Canada from 1997 to 2000. Professor Macdonald is an internationally renowned scholar on access to justice, legal pluralism, and the philosophy of law. He is also one of the foremost Canadian specialists on secured transactions and property law.

Professor Macdonald taught at the University of Windsor before joining the McGill University Faculty of Law. He has lectured and has held various visiting positions in Canada and around the world. He chaired a Task Force on Access to Justice for the Quebec Ministry of Justice, and has been a consultant to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, to the Ontario Civil Justice Review and to the Federal Department of Justice on the effect on federal law of the Civil Code of Québec. He was Dean of the McGill University Faculty of Law from 1984 to 1989.

Professor Macdonald was nominated a Trudeau Fellow in 2004. In 2007, he was awarded a Killam Prize, was honoured with the University of Ottawa Section de droit civil's Ordre du mérite, and was awarded the Sir William Dawson Medal for the Social Sciences by the Royal Society of Canada. Having been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1996, he was elected the organization's president in 2008. He was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in December 2012.

Roderick Macdonald earned a B.A. from York University, an L.L.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, an L.L.L. from the University of Ottawa, and an LL.M. from the University of Toronto.