Lexpert magazine features articles and columns on developments in legal practice management, deals and lawsuits of interest in Canada, the law and business issues of interest to legal professionals and businesses that purchase legal services.
Issue link: https://digital.carswellmedia.com/i/1547047
www.canadianlawyermag.com 71 WITHOUT PREJUDICE Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge was published this year by ECW Press. The film adaptation, Without Prejudice, will have its Canadian premiere on Sunday, November 1, at the Ancaster Memorial Arts Centre. The film is directed by Shane Stanley, stars David Arquette and David Mazouz as Brownstone, and co-stars Rachelle Lefevre and Danielle C. Ryan. Cinematography is by Joel Layogan and editing by Peter Devaney Flanagan. His own contribution to the bench's cultural shift included a practice then considered revo- lutionary: talking directly to litigants. When he was a lawyer, judges addressed only counsel – clients sat voiceless, often leaving with no idea what had been decided about their lives. Brownstone changed that, inviting litigants to ask him questions and explaining his decisions in plain terms. Within a few years, lawyers were pressuring their colleagues to do the same, he says. His 2009 book, Tug of War – the first book by a sitting Canadian judge written for a general audience on family law – was an extension of that impulse. His chief at the time offered no support; Justice Rosalie Abella, then on the Supreme Court of Canada, urged him to publish it anyway. The book became a bestseller. All royalties went to the Children's Wish Foundation. Life after the bench Brownstone retired in late 2021, partly pushed by the pandemic's shift to Zoom proceedings – "a very, very challenging way to try to connect with people emotionally," he says – and still carrying what he describes as the bitterness of the 2015 chief justice process. He says he was asked to submit his name to be chief justice at the time, but "I became the victim of some serious homophobia within the judiciary and a smear campaign that ended up in the media." His reinvention since then has been striking. The YouTube program Harvey Brownstone Interviews launched in 2021, attracts millions of viewers, and airs on tele- vision in the United Kingdom. A Hollywood feature film based on the memoir, directed by Shane Stanley and star- ring David Arquette as the judge, with David Mazouz as the young adult Harvey, will premiere in Canada on November 1. For the legal community, it is the book's account of the courts – written without the muzzle of judicial-conduct restric- tions – that is particularly significant. The access-to-justice challenges Brownstone raises have preoccupied courts, bar associ- ations, and governments for decades. His argument – that the family court model is structurally broken, and only a therapeutic, less adversarial approach will fix it – is not new in legal-reform circles. But it carries unusual weight from a judge who presided for a quarter century, tracked the data in his own courtroom, and is now free to say so.