Joseph Robison Dead at 70

Joseph Robison, director emeritus of the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress and a leading authority on civil liberties and religious freedom, died yesterday of cancer. He was 70 years old.

Robison drafted model civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation that have been adopted around the country. In particular, he drafted New York City’s Sharkey-Brown-Isaacs Law, the first statute against bias in the general housing market. The example set by this pioneering legislation has since been followed in more than a dozen states and in many cities.

Robison regularly represented the AJCongress at legislative hearings before Congress and state and local legislative bodies. He submitted briefs in leading cases on such issues as government support of sectarian schools, sectarian practices in public schools, the operation of Sunday laws, legislative apportionment and racial segregation in both the South and the North, before the United States Supreme Court and other courts.

These included a number of briefs filed in the historic series of cases in which the Supreme Court condemned racial segregation and broadly interpreted the constitutional guarantee of equality. Robison, a prolific author of articles and pamphlets on civil rights and civil liberties issues, was born in Crestwood, NY, in 1912. He was a graduate of Columbia College, 1932, and the Columbia Law School, 1934. He was a member of the New York State and United States Supreme Court bars. In addition to his work at the AJCongress, he was on the legal staff of the National Labor Relations Board for 10 years, served for 20 years as general counsel of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, and was chairman of the Equality Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.