Why does Rocco Galati do it?

As a constitutional lawyer, he conducts cases against governments, fighting the arbitrary exercise of state power. He is best known for defending clients with alleged terrorist ties, such as Abdurahman Khadr – and for publicly abandoning the latter case at a tearful press conference after receiving a serious death threat.

There have to be easier ways to make a living. But Galati says he's waging a struggle in the name of civilization and reason.

This outspoken and highly controversial Toronto attorney is the featured guest on the edition of VisionTV's Credo that airs Monday, Nov. 1 at 10:30 p.m. ET . Now in its third season, this intimate half-hour interview program invites famous Canadians to talk about life-changing experiences and the beliefs that sustained them through these times.

Born in Italy, Galati came to Canada with his family in the mid-1960s. His youthful views were influenced strongly by the experiences of his father, who had resisted being drafted into Mussolini's army and spent much of World War Two in prison camps.

Though educated in Catholic schools, Galati had rejected religion by his teens. “I once had an argument with my grade six teacher, Sister Mary Jane, about the existence of God,” he recalls. “She took me out into the hallway, punched me in the stomach and said, ‘Now do you believe in God?' That sums up the Catholic school system as far as I was concerned.”

Galati turned to literature for spiritual guidance, plowing his way through the classics from Saint Thomas Aquinas to William Shakespeare. Eventually, he came to believe that human nature remains primal and violent, and that the rule of law is the only effective means we have of suppressing our base instincts. This conviction informed his decision to pursue a legal career.

Not surprisingly, Galati is an outspoken critic of Canada's new anti-terror legislation, which in his view violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Panicked by the spectre of terrorism, he says, citizens sit by meekly while their governments conduct inquisitions. “Racism and the tribal frenzy of 9/11 have taken over reason. We're engaged in a counter-Enlightenment in the West, as we speak.”

Galati has always been ready to stand up for his beliefs. In 2002, he stormed out of a Toronto courtroom while defending a client accused of belonging to the terrorist group al-Jihad, charging that the proceedings were unjust. But as a single father, he decided against continuing to work on terrorism-related cases after his life was threatened.

Galati is now writing a book about his experiences. And he continues his fight for the triumph of reason over the instinctive savagery of human beings. “It's not the gang that does the drive-by shooting … that poses a threat to us as a collective society,” he says. “It's the Hitlers and Mussolinis who take the apparatus of the collective will and unleash the beast in humanity … What scares me about humanity is the inability to confront that truth and reality and do something about it.”