Michael E. Hancock at a glance
- Current role
- Senior Judge
- Current assignment
- DeKalb County Superior Court
- Jurisdiction
- Georgia · State
- Judicial service
- Active
Michael E. Hancock
Senior Judge · DeKalb County Superior Court
Biography
Professional career
- In 1991, Governor Zell Miller appointed him to the DeKalb Superior Court bench, making him the first African‐American judge in the Stone Mountain Circuit
- Hancock became DeKalb County’s first full‐time Black judge in 1983, serving as Chief Judge of the DeKalb Recorders Court from 1983 to 1991
- In 1979, he became DeKalb County’s first African‐American Public Defender and assistant solicitor general
- Pioneering African‐American judge in Georgia, serving over 30 years in DeKalb County’s courts and making historic contributions to the state’s judicial system
- At Emory, he led the Law Students Civil Rights Research Counsel and organized the school’s first minority student recruitment conference
Education
- While working as an investigator for the DeKalb Juvenile Court, colleagues encouraged him to attend law school, leading to his 1978 graduation from Emory University School of Law — just 11 years after the first African‐American student obtained a J.D. from Emory.
Additional information
- Served until his retirement in January 2012
- After law school, Hancock served a year with VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society’s Senior Citizens Law Project and briefly worked at Georgia Legal Services before returning to Atlanta.
- He was a founding member of the DeKalb Lawyers Association and was nicknamed “the Dean” for his leadership
- Hancock’s portrait, painted by Atlantan artist Katherine Schuber, hangs in the DeKalb County Courthouse.
- His courtroom and the courthouse itself remain landmarks in Decatur, Georgia, and his service is celebrated as a milestone in Georgia’s legal history
Published courtroom rules
Shared court rules
Uniform Superior Court Rules
DeKalb County Superior Court
Superior Court proceedings. Collected April 9, 2026 compilation; amendments effective November 5, 2026 are future on this collection date and are not applied. Section-specific exceptions, waivers, later amendments and case orders remain applicable. This is a source excerpt, not an exhaustive statement of the rule.
Official source ↗ · Collected 2026-10-27Sources
Identity source checked August 25, 2026.
Georgia Courts Directory
Identity source · HTML · Source checked August 25, 2026
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