OUTSPOKEN LAWYER, EDUCATOR PENS FIRST BOOK

Law professors don't usually wear shirts emblazoned with The Simpsons
family. But Alan Young, who teaches at Osgoode Hall and University of
Toronto, is far from the average educator, considering how he slams the
justice system in his debut book 'Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads,
Serial Killers & Lawyers'.

A resident in the Spadina and Dupont area, Young regards his profession
with as much disdain as an innocent prisoner. Young believes he is not
alone, writing "we hate criminal justice because it has demonstrated
absolutely no interest in acquiring even a kernel of insight into predatory
crime, and remains impotent to curb the tide of modern, senseless violence."

The harsh words are no surprise to any follower of Young's career. The
former lawyer has given half a million dollars of pro bono counsel as he
sought to defend underground hobbies from becoming demonized. Pro-pot
activists hailed Young as the voice responsible for establishing a
medicinal marijuana program in Canada. Sex trade workers applauded his work
with fetishists and "dungeon masters" (remember Terry Jean Bedford?) while
free-speech advocates counted themselves lucky to have nabbed eloquent
Young - he stood up for booksellers with an inventory of weed magazines and
2 Live Crew albums.

Toronto lawyer Paul Burstein says Young is one of the best orators he's
ever heard.

"He can easily adopt to any audience," Burstein adds. Combined with a
reading roster ranging from Nietzsche to Frank Zappa, Young is worldly
enough to apply his book's premise to every Canadian.

"We have issues of misplaced priorities," he explains, his hands dancing as
he speaks. "We criminalize pleasures like pot-smoking and prostitution,
which draws money away from dealing with serious crime."

Young would like to see the justice system take power away from legal
professionals and put it back into the hands of community representatives.

"I don't like our jury system of pulling names out of a hat, asking these
people who know nothing about law to come up with an informed verdict, and
ending up with nothing learnt about the process." He finally exhales. "And
we contribute little to repairing the problem."

In his 18-year career as lawyer for the fringe, Young knows first-hand the
frustration of his job. Other lawyers will understand his anger, he says,
but he doesn't expect a system reform yet. Too many people won't take
kindly to his indictment.

"This is my suicide note," Young admits without a hint of fear. He says
this book had to be purged, especially with his higher literary aspirations.

"I want to establish credibility as a good writer," he says. "I might
continue this tradition of literary non-fiction." Young attaches "literary"
to Justice Defiled because he wrote the book in the voice of an imaginary
character - a vicious convict jaded by the system. After penning 30
academic articles and a biweekly newspaper column, Young realized this
off-kilter narrator is his Mr. Hyde.

In the book, Young mixes acidic commentary with educated analysis. He
writes "The real problem of pursuing moral hygiene as a state objective is
that it has distracted the state from effectively pursuing its one true
objective - protecting citizens."

In conversation, Young is as lucid as his narrator.

"For lawyers, it's emotionally draining to deal with real human drama. So
the law transforms crime into recognizable categories, but if we ever want
to get out of the revolving door of processing criminals, we have to get
our hands dirty with real human conflict."

The author has probably some of the dirtiest hands in the business, and the
payoff often makes him grin.

"I'm glad I essentially converted the federal government into a drug
trafficker," he boasts, and the claim is justified because he went to bat
for AIDS patient Jim Wakeford in 1999, leading to the first medicinal
marijuana program in the country.

And although Young's legal team recently lost the battle to repeal
marijuana prohibition, the war to decriminalize the plant is ongoing, Young
asserts. As expected, Young ties it into legal immorality.

"Lawyers always talk about the stupidity of the marijuana law, but they're
not saying anything publicly. I've taken the burden of that attention."