Alan Young is Co-Founder and Director of Osgoode’s Innocence Project, which involves LLB students in the investigation of suspected cases of wrongful conviction and imprisonment.   He also maintains a small practice specializing in criminal law and procedure that is primarily devoted to challenging state authority to criminalize consensual activity. He has brought constitutional challenges to our gambling, obscenity, bawdy-house and drug laws and for more than a decade has provided free legal services for people whose alternative lifestyles have brought them into conflict with the law. In 1995 he successfully challenged the “drug literature prohibition” in our Criminal Code on the basis that it violated freedom of expression. In 1998 he acted as counsel for the infamous “bondage bungalow” dominatrix. Between 1998 and 2000 he played an integral part in compelling the federal government to take action to recognize the medicinal value of marijuana. He has represented countless numbers of people suffering from AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis who had been charged as a result of using marijuana for medicinal purposes. In addition to his work in the area of consensual crime, Professor Young has also provided free legal services to victims of violent crime and to individuals attempting to sue the government for malicious prosecution.  He is the author of Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads, Serial Killers and Lawyers (Toronto: Key Porter, 2003).

Areas of interest: Clinical Education, Criminal Law