The Honourable Mr. Justice Adrian Dudley Saunders was born in St. Vincent on 4th January 1954, the last of five children of the late Thomas Saunders and Theo Saunders. Mr. Justice Saunders attended St. Mary's Primary School and later St. Vincent Grammar School in St. Vincent where he was the Head Boy during the 1971-1972 academic year.

After secondary school, Mr. Justice Saunders took the Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill) in 1975. He followed this with the Legal Education Certificate of the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad & Tobago in 1977, and was called to the Bar of St. Vincent & the Grenadines in that same year.

Mr. Justice Saunders remained in private practice as barrister and solicitor from 1977 until 1996. From 1985 to 1994, he served as a member of the Bar Council of the Eastern Caribbean Bar Association, while occupying the post of Secretary of the St. Vincent Bar Association during that same period. In 1996, he was appointed to act as a Judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ESCS). At the time of his appointment, he was the Senior Partner in the firm of Saunders & Huggins. In January 1997 he was confirmed as a High Court Judge, being first assigned to the dependent territories of Montserrat and Anguilla and then in 2001 to St. Lucia.

On 1st May, 2003, Mr. Justice Saunders was appointed Justice of Appeal of the ESCS and in June 2004, was appointed to act as Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in the absence of Sir Dennis Byron who is on leave, having taken up a United Nations appointment in Arusha until 2007. Mr. Justice Saunders took the oath of office as a Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice at the Court's Inauguration Ceremony, on Saturday 16 April 2005.

Since being appointed a Judge of the ECSC, Mr. Justice Saunders has been deeply involved in judicial reform in the Eastern Caribbean. He has been a faculty member of the Halifax-based Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute since 1998, and as such has regularly participated in judicial education programmes for Judges from throughout the Commonwealth. Mr. Justice Saunders served as Chairman of the Judicial Education Institute of the ECSC from 2001 to 2004. From 2000 to 2004, he sat as Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the ECSC, presiding over the development of a code of ethics for Judges of the Eastern Caribbean.

Off the Bench, Mr. Justice Saunders was President of the National Youth Council of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He represented his country at table tennis on a number of occasions and for many years he was a member of the Executive of the St. Vincent & the Grenadines Table Tennis Association. He also served as Chairman of the St. Vincent Save the Children and as President of the St. Vincent Guild of Graduates. In December 2004, with the concurrence of the affected parties, Mr. Justice Saunders was appointed by a Caribbean Community (Caricom) Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket to act as Judge-Advocate and deliver a binding ruling on a heated dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies Players' Association.

The Honourable Mr. Justice Saunders is married to Marilyn Angela née Joslyn and has two sons, both of whom are at university in Canada : Yuri, aged 22 and Yanek, aged 19.