Roderick A Macdonald

Faculty of Law

(For a full list of publications, please download the Curriculum Vitae or visit the Publications section in the upper left column.)

Biography

Professor Macdonald teaches and publishes in the areas of civil law, commercial law, administrative law, constitutional law, jurisprudence and access to justice. He was Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1984 to 1989. He chaired a Task Force on Access to Justice of the Ministère de la justice du Québec (1989-91), 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 interaction of federal law and the Civil Code of Québec. From 1989 to 1995 he was Director of the Law in Society programme of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and from 1997 to 2000, he was the founding President of the Law Commission of Canada.

Between 2002 and 2004 he was a consultant to the World Bank in Ukraine and drafted that country's current law on secured transactions. In 2003 and 2004 he was a consultant on civil judgement execution with the CIDA-sponsored Legal Reform Project in the Republic of Vietnam. Since 2002 he has been a member of the Canadian delegation to UNCITRAL and is on the team drafting the legislative guide to secured transactions law.

In April 2007, Professor Macdonald was awarded a Killam Prize, Canada's most distinguished annual award for outstanding career achievement in research. In September 2007, he was honoured with the University of Ottawa Section de droit civil's Ordre du mérite and in November 2007 was awarded the Sir William Dawson Medal for the Social Sciences by the Royal Society of Canada.

In November 2008, Professor Macdonald was elected the 111th president of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) at its annual general meeting in Ottawa. He is the first law professor ever to have been elected president of the RSC. He will serve as president-elect until next November 2009, when he will formally take up the presidency.

Professor Macdonald received the Canadian Bar Association's (CBA) 2010 Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Law in recognition of his contributions to the law. It was presented to him at an awards luncheon in Niagara Falls in August 2010, during the CBA's annual Canadian Legal Conference and Expo. Furthermore, in October 2010, he received an LL.D. (honoris causa) from the University of Montreal.

Professor Macdonald has lectured widely across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia and has held visiting positions at Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, the Australian National University, the University Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand and the University of Aix-Marseilles.

Honours and Awards

2010 LL.D. (Honoris causa), Université de Montréal

2010 Ramon Hnatyshyn Medal, Canadian Bar Association

2009 Elected President, Royal Society of Canada

2007 Ordre du mérite, Faculty of Civil Law, University of Ottawa

2007 Sir William Dawson Medal for the Social Sciences, Royal Society of Canada

2007 Killam Prize for the Social Sciences, Canada Council

2006 Elected Secretary, Academy II, Royal Society of Canada

2004 Elected Associate Member, International Academy of Comparative Law

2004 Elected Member, Insolvency Institute of Canada

2004-07 Fellow, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation

1996 Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

Education

LL.M. (Toronto) 1975

LL.L. (Ottawa) 1974

LL.B. (Osgoode Hall) 1972

B.A. (York) 1969

Employment

F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 1995-

President, Law Commission of Canada, 1997-2000

Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 1984-1995

Director, Law in Society Programme, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 1989-1994

Dean of Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 1984-1989

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 1979-1984

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, 1977-1979

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, 1975-1977

Law Society of Upper Canada,1978-

Barreau du Quebec, 1983-

Areas of Interest

Administrative law, secured transactions, jurisprudence, legal pluralism, access to justice.