WITHOUT PREJUDICE: My Life as a Gay Judge, a memoir of living the curse "May you live an interesting life in interesting times"

WITHOUT PREJUDICE: My Life as a Gay Judge
HARVEY BROWNSTONE
ECW Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$21.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Harvey Brownstone’s story is a tumultuous, sometimes hilarious, and uplifting journey from bullied child to outcast after coming out to his parents, to trailblazing lawyer, to distinguished judge.

Brownstone colorfully details his momentous and inventive judicial career marked by his numerous innovations of the justice system, particularly revolutionizing Ontario’s child support enforcement program.

In retirement, he is no longer shackled by the restraints traditionally imposed on the judiciary, and thus Brownstone provides a frank, unfiltered, and refreshing glimpse into the inner workings of the justice system, boldly delineating the strengths and weaknesses of criminal and family courts, both of which he claims are sorely in need of comprehensive reform. His remarkable story, reinventing himself from high-profile judge to highly acclaimed talk show host, is a testament to the resilience and triumph of the human spirit.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: An unusual man's memoir of being unabashedly unusual and unapologetically opinionated.

Judges are not often public figures while still sitting on the bench. Harvey Brownstone got that memo, looked it over for legal penalties, saw there were specific things he was never to speak of so he didnt, and then quietly spoke up for the powerless his entire career. A fluently bilingual judge in an Anglophone province, he was in demand to hear cases involving Francophone participants; he was always active in criminal and family law; he was always, as a good judge ought to be, aware of how his decisions were going to impact all the parties' futures.

A lot of Justice Brownstone's empathy for people enduring trouble, as by definition all those in the legal system are, comes from his parents' surprising rejection of him when he came out to them as gay. It was the 1970s! They were sophisticated people, not from some lunatic religious-nut group...just quite homophobic. This disappointed me, as well as made me empathetically upset on his behalf. Fiive years of no contact made me cringe for him.

As he transitions his narrative to the legal career he self-financed (imagine trying *that* in 2026!) the tenor shifts from personal suffering to compassion for the suffering of other as they wend their way through a system he knows is stacked against them. Defendant or plaintiff, the Canadian legal system is as labyrinthine and intentionally complicated as that anywhere in the world. Justice Brownstone does not hold back in this memoir from expressing his anger at the cruelty baked into the system as it is...most especially the capricious, arbitrary "family" courts.

Justice Brownstone wrote of that system in a 2009 book entitled Tug of War: A Judge's Verdict on Separation, Custody Battles and the Bitter Realities of Family Court in 2009, published by the same house this book comes from. I don't think my blood pressure would remain safely controlled were I to read that book. This one, with its wider focus, challenged me, so I'll be avoiding his earlier book. No more hospital visits for TIAs if I can help it!

I suspect Canadian readers will be more involved in the nuts-and-boltsness of Justice Brownstone's policy agenda for legal-system reform. I'm totally with him in the spirit of his reforms; I can't see anyone in the US who holds a comparable position writing so openly and passionately in favor of redressing the balance of the system. It makes me a bit jealous, like having Mark Carney as their head of government does. Still leaves me with an overall positive impression of Justice Brownstone, and a hearty supportive push for any and all Canadians reading these words to go get themselves involved in his crusades.

I'm hoping the US readers will see what an honest, person-centered, effective and responsible progressive looks like and will start looking for more of them here.