Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads, Serial Killers and Lawyers

by Alan N. Young

Justice Defiled storms the gates of the criminal justice system to reveal hard truths about the legal community and whom it ultimately serves Justice Defiled confronts the hypocrisy of Canada’s criminal justice system, and Alan Young, a criminal lawyer with 18 years of experience and a professor of Law at Osgoode Hall, calls for change and compassion in a system rife with failures and abuses. Justice is not blind; it is a blunt instrument wielded by the powerful and the elite. Young has vast experience challenging the constitutionality of gambling laws, obscenity laws and drug laws, and knows firsthand the hypocritical nature of Canada’s criminal justice system. He charges lawyers and judges with greed, rudeness, and apathy, and Canada’s constitution with prejudice and archaism. He believes today’s criminal justice system reflects the skewed and contradictory beliefs of an unforgiving society. His high profile cases—which include defending Terry Jean Bedford, the Bondage Bungalow Dominatrix, and challenging for the first time in Canadian history the prohibition of cannabis—lend weight and intrigue to his text. Armed with a clear and controversial message, an unwavering belief in change and a highly irreverent tone, Justice Defiled looks to shake up a system that has been static in its discrimination and rampant in its abuse for far too long.(September 2003)

Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Alan N. Young was a Canadian lawyer who was a Professor Emeritus of law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Ontario. He retired July 2018. Prior to starting his teaching career at Osgoode in 1986, Young clerked for Chief Justice Bora Laskin of the Supreme Court of Canada and worked as a criminal lawyer in Toronto. Young was the co-founder and former director of Osgoode's Innocence Project, which seeks to investigate and overturn cases of wrongful conviction and provides experiential education to law students. During his 30 year tenure as a law professor, he maintained a small practice in criminal law and provided "free legal services to those whose alternative lifestyles have brought them into conflict with the law and to victims of violent crime and individuals attempting to sue the government for malicious prosecution". Young was recognized by Canadian Lawyer Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Most Influential" in the justice system and legal profession in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. In 2018, Young was also awarded the Dianne Martin Medal for Social Justice Through Law.

Reviews

[Marc-Boris St-Maurice · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for anyone who wants to understand our legal system. Everything they don't teach you in law school, but that they should.