JACK Hunter, as he was known to his friends, was the son of John Mair Hunter QC, latterly sheriff principal of Roxburgh, Berwick and Selkirk. The young Jack was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Rugby before graduating BA (Law) at Oxford and LLB at Edinburgh University.

In 1937 he was called to both the English and Scottish Bars, going on to practise at the latter. However, war intervened and, as lieutenant RNVR, he was mobilised even before the formal outbreak of hostilities.

He served, first as gunnery officer on a minelayer, HMS Menestheus, which was on one occasion hit by two enemy bombs, albeit miraculously avoiding serious damage. He then served for two full years in the Western Approaches and thereafter successively on corvettes and a frigate before being promoted to lieutenant-commander RNVR in November 1944.

Victory in Europe brought no respite and he found himself in Rangoon the day before the Japanese left. He had to walk from the airfield to the docks - some 15 miles - in the breaking monsoon. There he was appointed naval staff officer (intelligence) and acted as one of the escorting officers at the surrender of the Japanese Burma army generals and staff on the campus of Rangoon University.

He said subsequently that he kept a keen eye on his charge's large Samurai sword until it was safely handed over.

Shortly after that surrender, the war ended for Jack when he was shipped home with amoebic dysentery. Detained in hospital for two months, he was eventually discharged having lost about half his normal body weight in the interim. Throughout his life, Jack made light of his distinguished war service but, in a quiet moment, he was heard to say that after the war ended he found he had lost his taste for the sea.

He had been deeply saddened by the death of his great friend, "best man" and fellow yachtsman Bobby Whitelaw in an attack by a U-boat, and couldn't bring himself to sail again. He was, however, a lifelong supporter of the RNLI, being chairman and then president of the Dunbar branch and, after many years, the proud recipient of the RNLI gold badge.

In March 1946, Jack returned to practise at the Scottish Bar where he proved to be an outstanding lawyer and advocate. Perhaps tempered by his war service, he was always a formidable adversary and it is rumoured that, if things were going badly, he would turn to his instructing solicitor and announce quietly: "It is time to have a row."

At all events, he moved quickly through the ranks and, after being for a time junior counsel to the Admiralty, he was appointed king's counsel in 1951. In 1957 he was appointed sheriff principal of Ayr and Bute, continuing in that office until 1961 when he was elevated to the Court of Session Bench.

As a judge he exuded judicial presence and he presided in a manner both firm and deliberate and with conspicuous fairness.

He was appointed chairman of the Scottish Law Commission in 1971. There he remained until 1981 when he returned to the Bench as a respected member of the Inner House or Appeal Court. At about the same time he and his first wife, Doris, moved out of Edinburgh to East Lothian where, after his retirement in 1986, he dedicated much of his time to his hobbies of gardening and ornithology.

Always a devoted family man, he also lavished affection on the family's succession of cats and, at an advanced age, on one occasion sat for a whole night under a tree in which a panicked new arrival had sought refuge from a dog, and was unable to descend. At daybreak, Jack borrowed an extending ladder and plucked her to safety from the topmost rung, a feat worthy of a man half his age.

Throughout his career and, indeed, throughout his life, Jack Hunter was steadfast and resolute in everything he did. He was also a man of exacting principles which he was seldom, if ever, prepared to compromise - a rare virtue both now and then.

This appreciation would not be complete without mention of one of Jack's dearest loves - the noble art of angling. Having served a long apprenticeship on the remote brown trout lochs of Lewis and Harris, Jack graduated to sea-trout and salmon via Loch Shiel and the rivers Dionard, Helmsdale, Brora and Deveron.

Always a great raconteur, he was a generous, amusing and knowledgeable companion who was missed by his many angling friends when he finally "hung up his fishing rod" at the age of 88.

Jack also contributed much to what he described as the "politics" of the sport. In the 1960s, he chaired the Departmental Committee on Scottish Salmon and Trout fisheries, whose interim report in 1963 led to the abolition of all drift-netting for salmon in Scottish waters. In the 1980s, he became chairman of the Scottish Council of the Salmon & Trout Association, eventually elected honorary president of the parent body.

As his track record suggests, Jack was throughout an ardent opponent of all forms of interceptory netting of migratory fish, both salmon and sea-trout, and he became a keen supporter of the Icelandic based North Atlantic Salmon Fund and its founder-chairman, Orri Vigfusson, with whom he shared an identity of view.

Jack Hunter fought a gallant war, became a distinguished advocate and an even more distinguished judge, was widely admired as the man of principle which he was, and died much loved by his family, friends and companions, particularly those who will always remember him with a fishing rod in his hand.

He married, first in 1939, Doris Mary Simpson who died in 1988 and, secondly in 1989, Angela Marion McLean, who survives him along with a daughter, Mary, of his first marriage.

John Oswald Mair Hunter; born February 21, 1913, died March 20, 2006.