Caron attended the United States Coast Guard Academy, majoring in physics and political science and as Commander of the Corps of Cadets in 1974. He was an Arctic navigator and salvage-diving officer aboard the US Coast Guard cutter "Polar Star". In San Francisco he was assistant chief of the Marine Environment Protection Service for California. Caron studied at the University of Wales in Cardiff in 1979 on a Fulbright Commission scholarship. He then studied law at the University of California, Berkeley. He subsequently joined the faculty in 1987. He also served as a legal assistant at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal for both Judges Richard M. Mosk and Charles N. Brower. Professor Caron developed extensive expertise as an international arbitrator, including as a Commissioner with the Precedent Panel of the U. N. Compensation Commission in Geneva that resolved claims from the 1990 Gulf War.