Since his call to the Bar in 1960, Martin L. Friedland has been involved in a number of important public policy issues, including bail, legal aid, gun control, securities regulation, access to the law, judicial independence and accountability, and national security. My Life in Crime and other Academic Adventures offers a first-hand account of the development of these areas of law from the perspective of a man who was heavily involved in their formation and implementation. It is also the story of a distinguished academic, author, and former dean of law at the University of Toronto.

Moving beyond the boundaries of conventional memoir, Friedland offers an extended meditation on public policy issues and significant events in the field of law, discussing their historical impact and predicting the course of their future development. Given his personal experience, there is no other person more suited to discuss these hugely important issues. Friedland puts the law and legal institutions into a wider context, looking at the role of personalities, politics, and pressure groups in the establishment of laws that continue to have tremendous importance for Canadians.

My Life in Crime and other Academic Adventures reflects upon a life devoted to education, scholarship, and the law, and is an insider account of public policy issues that have come to shape life in this country in the twentieth century and beyond.

Martin L. Friedland is University Professor and Professor of Law Emeritus at The University of Toronto.  He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1990, and was awarded the Molson Prize in 1995.

Martin L. Friedland's profile page

• Commended, Heritage Toronto Book Award

All in all, My Life in Crime and Other Academic Adventures by Martin L. Friedland is a wonderful autobiography of an individual who has accomplished much and who has observed, studied and commented upon the critical issues of the last half-century with aplomb, insight and becoming modesty.

Criminal Law Quarterly

Martin Friedland’s recent book My Life in Crime and Other Academic Adventures is both a personal memoir and a lively review of much that has happened in Canadian legal policy during the last forty years.

Law Times