Sir William Vincent John Evans GCMG MBE QC (20 October 1915 – 18 May 2007) was a British diplomat and international lawyer, who served as Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the United Kingdom from 1980 to 1991.
Evans was born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1937 and a BCL on a Cassel Scholarship from Lincoln's Inn in 1938.
He served as the UK's Representative to the Council of Europe Steering Committee on Human Rights from 1976 to 1980, and chaired the group in his last year there.
He left the Committee in 1984 and was succeeded by Dame Rosalyn Higgins,[2] who went on to become the first female member of the International Court of Justice, and its president from 2006 to 2009.
He spent ten years at the Court, taking part in a number of significant judgements including Dudgeon v United Kingdom, and retired in 1991.