Randolph Jackson

Randolph L. Jackson (born 1943) is an attorney, author and retired justice of the New York Supreme Court. He was a co-founder of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, and was the longest-serving justice in the Civil Term of the Kings County Supreme Court, from which he retired in 2010. His writings include Black People in the Bible and How to Get a Fair Trial by Jury.

As of 2013, Jackson is of counsel for the firm of Okun, Oddo & Babat. He also serves as a hearing officer for National Arbitration and Mediation, which he joined in 2011.

Early life and education

Jackson was born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City.

For his college education, Jackson first attended Shimer College, a Great Books college in Illinois. He went on to obtain a JD at Brooklyn Law School, where he studied as a night student, He subsequently worked for a year at Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon, and from 1971 to 1981 was in private practice.

Jackson began his judicial career in the Civil Court of New York City, where he served from 1981 to 1985, when he transferred to the criminal division. He was elected to the Kings County Supreme Court in 1987 and reelected in 2002. He retired in 2010, the longest-serving justice in the court's civil term. The MBBA was formed in 1984, replacing two previous African-American bar associations, the Harlem Lawyers Association and the Bedford Stuyvesant Lawyers Association. As a former president of the Bedford Stuyvesant association, Jackson played a key role in the merger. It was later found that Jackson had issued a bench warrant for the suspect's arrest when the family failed to produce a death certificate, but the warrant had been "misdirected" and never served. He served for a time on the Board of Directors of the Navy Yard Boys and Girls Club, among other organizations.

Writings Black People in the Bible (2002) How to Get a Fair Trial by Jury: Picking the Jury in a Criminal Case (1978, 2003)