MAVERICK LAWYER RAGES AT JUSTICE DENIED

The second last time I set eyes on Alan Young he was in the company of a
suburban dominatrix with lavish makeup, large hair and Rubenesque physique.

More recently, our paths crossed briefly in a downtown hotel where he was
counselling a roomful of perplexed Canadian seniors -- members of the
Senate, actually -- on the salubrious uses of marijuana and the foolishness
of any government waging war against it.

Alan Young is a Toronto lawyer and professor. He takes cases that are
quirky, provocative, and important. And he is such a gold-plated hoot it
is difficult to say, all in all, whether he would be more fun to have as a
legal counsel or a college roommate.

Since his cases frequently deal with sex, drugs, freedom of choice (matters
extremely popular with the news media), and since Young tosses
suitable-for-framing quotes off the top of his head, and since he will
cheerfully challenge stuffed shirts, sacred cows and social niceties
whenever he finds them, he gets more publicity alone than most large law
firms do in total.

Now he has written a book. He not the first lawyer to do so. Some written
by lawyers are even readable. Those not consumed with the intricacies of
the law are even highly profitable.

George V. Higgins was a lawyer. John Grisham, too.

It is probably safe to say, however, that there have been few books written
by lawyers that are quite like Alan Young's Justice Defiled: Perverts,
Potheads, Serial Killers and Lawyers, published today by Key Porter.

The author calls it "a celebration of the vulgar," "an expression of
disgust." It is all that and more. He also calls it "a professional
suicide note." Time, one supposes, will tell.

For now, it is if nothing else an entertaining screed and provocative
read. You have to figure, after all, that someone who spent much of his
career providing pro bono services to "hookers, druggies, gamblers and an
assortment of minor criminals" would have a good yarn to spin.

From the beginning to end it is unorthodox, opening as it does with a
pledge to "let the heresy begin," describing law school as "a breeding
ground of neurosis," and ending with a breezy "namaste."

None of which will surprise those who happen to notice that the book is
dedicated to Young's father, and to the late firm of Bruce, Hoffman, Zappa.
That would be Lenny, Abbie and Frank.

And the reader might detect their irreverent influence in Young's opening
appraisal of some of his colleagues in the law.

"Even lawyers who never steal from trust funds look like thieves when they
charge $500 an hour for their services. Who the hell is worth this amount
of money? It's not like the lawyer is scaling Mount Everest for you.
You're paying this large sum for their posh offices and fancy suits, and as
payback for all those years they had to spend in law school listening to
people like me rant and rave about the corrupt aspects of law. I do not
need a control-group survey to know that most law students are in it for
the money. I see it in their eyes. Even when they say, 'I want to seek
social justice,' they usually mean, 'I want a BMW.'"

That's but the beginning. As enthusiastically as he savages lawyers, Young
rails against the folly, in obscenity and drug laws, of "manufacturing
crime and moral panics instead of actually combating real, predatory crime."

Beyond protecting citizens and providing the infrastructure for orderly
relations, the state should not stray, Young argues.

"True democracy and freedom encompass the freedom to construct one's own
heaven or hell...SOme people will hump themselves to death or intoxicate
themselves into oblivion, but that is no business of the state unless the
excess decadence truly hurts an innocent third party."

In the course of making this case, he employs a good deal of profanity,
porn excerpts, rap lyrics. It's a wild ride.

Baudelaire and Timothy Leary, Sanskrit and hash pipes, are encountered only
paragraphs apart. Readers will find terms and concepts they might
associate more with The Story of O than the minutes of the Law Society of
Upper Canada. They are as apt to encounter a blow by blow about the
workings of a bawdy house as they are definitions of mens rea.

Young has at plea bargains, at sentencing procedures, at a criminal justice
system he says "has become a failure and an institution held up to ridicule."

"I could provide countless examples in which courts were soft on violence
and hard on drugs... countless examples in which dangerous men walk home
from court on probation and harmless con men get hustled into holding
cells. I am not saying that judges never get it right. I'm saying there's
nothing to get right -- it's all arbitrary."

Only a sort of double-barrelled stupidity, he says, "could explain the
perverse discrepancy between the five year rape/break-and-enter sentence
and the 14-year hash-importing sentence....We really have lost our way."

"Too many lawyers and not enough justice," he says. "That's the
conclusion, plain and simple."

Young has tried, he said, to lay the foundation for Dick the Butcher's
master plan (Shakespeare, circa 1620) of first killing all the lawyers.

But the end of the day, and with all due respect, "the rest is up to you."