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Author: William A. Jacobson

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William A. Jacobson

William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School.

He is a 1981 graduate of Hamilton College and a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School. At Harvard he was Senior Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal and Director of Litigation for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Prior to joining the Cornell law faculty in 2007, Professor Jacobson had a highly successful civil litigation and arbitration practice in Providence, Rhode Island, concentrating in investment, employment, and business disputes in the securities industry, including many high profile cases reported in leading newspapers and magazines.

Professor Jacobson has argued cases in numerous federal and state courts, including the Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Professor Jacobson has a national reputation as a leading practitioner in securities arbitration. He was Treasurer, and is a former member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a professional organization of attorneys dedicated to protecting public investors. He frequently is quoted in national media on issues related to investment fraud and investor protection, and in the past has served as one of a small number of private practice attorneys who trained new arbitrators for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Professor Jacobson is co-author of the Securities Arbitration Desk Reference (Thomson-Reuters), updated annually.

Professor Jacobson is frequently quoted in the media on political and legal topics, has authored many Op-Eds in major publications, and appears on television and radio to discuss politics and the law.

A more complete listing of Professor Jacobson's professional background is available at the Cornell Law School website. The views expressed here are his own and not those of any employer or organization,

The best way to reach Prof. Jacobson is by e-mail here.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2013 27 Comments
There has been a not too subtle attempt this week to smear the Tea Party as racist and violent in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. What does the Tea Party have to do with the assassination? It's an outgrowth of the discredited and time-worn eliminationist narrative, that the modern "right wing" and the Tea Party in particular are the inheritors of the "paranoid style of politics" from the 1960s. The logic, if you call it that, is that Dallas was a city infused with hate and anti-Catholic bigotry, that bigotry was reflective of a larger Southern bigotry including racism, and that the Tea Party is the outgrowth of that racist, bigoted past which led to the assassination. There is a problem with all this, of course.  Kennedy was killed by a Lee Harvey Oswald, a Commie, not the "right wing." Let me repeat, because this is the internet:

JACK KENNEDY WAS KILLED BY A COMMIE!!!

You would not know that if you read the attempt to portray the Kennedy assassination as the result of right wing, bigoted hatred in the mainstream liberal media and blogosphere: Rich Lowry notes (also see video at bottom of post), The Kennedy Conspiracy in Plain Sight:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2013 5 Comments

We have written so many times about the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement. The BDS movement is particularly strong on campuses in part because of the support from anti-Israel faculty and outside groups that target campuses: Brown U. divestment committee faculty member signed 2009 letter calling...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 23, 2013 17 Comments

Legal Insurrection readers once micro-aggressively attacked me for writing "me and __": UCLA Prof accused of racist “micro-aggression” for correcting student grammar Shock Video: Black students decry UCLA as not diverse enough Probably Government majors: Cornell multicultural group uses “diversity” to excuse spending sprees, missing funds, mismanagement See, told ya...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 22, 2013 46 Comments
Almost as soon as George Zimmerman was arrested, a report surfaced that girlfriend Samantha Scheibe, who made the dramatic phone call to 911, had been shopping her story to national media for several weeks -- but no one would pay her what she wanted. The Orlando Sentinel confirmed that at least one national media outlet (unnamed) had such communications:
WKMG's report that the women were seeking money for interviews with national news organizations was confirmed to the Sentinel by one such organization.
Not unexpectedly, the Zimmerman defense team is letting it be known that this was a set-up, via TMZ:
George Zimmerman was duped and done in by a lying GF who faked a pregnancy to keep him around and then framed him when she realized he was leaving her ... sources connected with Zimmerman tell TMZ. George is now facing felony domestic violence charges after Samantha Scheibe claimed he threatened her with a gun and forced her out of their house. Our Zimmerman sources say ... here's how it really went down:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 22, 2013 18 Comments
We have highlighted the race between Republican Rep. Tom Reed and Democratic challenger Martha Robertson in NY-23 many times. In part because it's my home district, but mostly because it is a swing district which leans Republican but includes liberal Tompkins County, making it competitive. It's not hyperbole to say the upstate NY districts like NY-23 will be key to Republicans holding the House by a comfortable majority. Robertson's problems with an apparently false fundraising claim that "GOP Ops" tried to take down her website during a crucial fundraising period gained statewide and even national attention. Legal Insurrection broke that story. Robertson said the campaign would hire a forensic investigative team, but the campaign has not responded to my email seeking an update as to whether a firm was hired and the status of the investigation of the alleged hacking. Robertson also is receiving local media attention for her years-long support for single payer, another story Legal Insurrection broke: I predicted that Robertson would have trouble with single payers support in the wake of the Obamacare debacle, and sure enough, she's running away from her past support for single payer. The Buffalo News reports on the controversy:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 22, 2013 56 Comments
It's not for nothing that Obama nuked the filibuster rule.  Yes, Obama.  Harry Reid would not have done it except with marching orders. There's plenty of commentary all around about how this is a desperate move by Obama, as he sinks in the polls and his most "historic" achievement -- Obamacare -- eats away at the Democratic Party like a flesh-eating wound. Obama can pack open judicial seats with hard core partisans, and put his desired apparatchiks in positions of administrative power. I expressed my view on the opportunity this presents, Democrats nuked the ratchet. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with some commentators who normally are not on my side of the fence.  This Dana Milbank column makes some important points, although he inaccurately also blames Republicans for allegedly abusing the filibuster, The Democrats’ naked power grab:
“Congress is broken,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789.... Here’s what then-Sen. Joe Biden said in 2005 when a Republican Senate majority threatened to use a similar “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority to carry the day: “The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play . . . tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field. I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 22, 2013 60 Comments
The seemingly inexorable march towards economic socialism and political statism has been accomplished through legislative and judicial ratchets which, once established, were all but impossible to reverse in part because the filibuster helped lock in the agenda and those supporting the agenda. Because of the ratchet, the nation moved only in one direction: Towards redistribution of wealth, and bigger government. Because of the ratchet, there was little or no hope of fundamental reversals. Not anymore. When Democrats -- the embodiment of redistribution and statism -- exercised the Nuclear Option yesterday, they blew up the ratchet. The filibuster is dead for all purposes, even if superficially only as to non-Supreme Court nomninees. No one will respect the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees or important legislation -- the Senate can't be half pregnant. Ezra Klein gives several reasons whey the filibuster effectively is dead for all purposes, and why that may be a good thing for Republicans in the near term, Nine reasons the filibuster change is a huge deal:
8. There's a lot of upside for Republicans in how this went down. It came at a time when Republicans control the House and are likely to do so for the duration of President Obama's second term, so the weakening of the filibuster will have no effect on the legislation Democrats can pass. The electoral map, the demographics of midterm elections, and the political problems bedeviling Democrats make it very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015 and then he will be able to take advantage of a weakened filibuster. And, finally, if and when Republicans recapture the White House and decide to do away with the filibuster altogether, Democrats won't have much of an argument when they try to stop them....
The inexorable march no longer is inexorable.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2013 15 Comments
California, with over 1 million canceled health policies due to Obamacare, has formally rejected Obama's so-called fix. https://twitter.com/CoveredCA/statuses/403645916596273152 Via The L.A. Times:
Spurning President Obama’s plan for canceled policies, California's health insurance exchange voted against any extension for about 1 million policyholders in the state. The five-member board of the exchange voted unanimously to keep its current requirement that insurers terminate most individual policies Dec. 31 because they don't meet all the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The decision ends a weeklong drama over what would happen for policyholders who will lose their existing coverage at year-end and face finding replacement insurance that may cost them substantially more in many instances. Covered California, the state exchange, considered allowing renewals into 2014 as Obama proposed or a short-term extension through March to give people more time to shop. But state leaders ultimately rejected those options. They expressed concerns about further confusing consumers and worried that widespread renewals could keep too many healthy customers out of the broader risk pool that will shape future rates.
At the same time, the California Health Exchange released figures purporting to show great progress is signing up new enrollees, close to 3000 a day, but the numbers are dwarfed by the scope of policy cancellations. Via The Wall Street Journal:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2013 34 Comments
The so-called knockout game is receiving a lot of media attention. It's hard to know if it is escalating in frequency, or just getting more media coverage: An incident on November 16, 2013 at the edge of the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY, appears to fit this pattern of an unprovoked, seemingly random sucker punch to the face of a stranger without any apparent robbery or other motive (emphasis added):

November 18, 2013 Assault reported on University Ave, near Lake St, 11/16/13 The Ithaca Police Department is investigating a reported assault that occurred on

University Ave., near Lake Street, around 3:11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013.

According to the male victim, he and a friend were walking on University Ave., near Lake Street, when they were approached by two males. The victim reports that the two males did not say anything, but one of the males punched the victim in the face with a closed fist causing pain and physical injury. The victim describes the perpetrators as a tall black male wearing dark clothing and a shorter Hispanic male also wearing dark clothing. The perpetrators then fled the area in a southerly direction on University Ave. The extent of the injury to the victim was not immediately apparent at the time of the incident and has been upgraded to an Assault.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2013 67 Comments
UPDATE: Senate Filibuster Rule Change Vote 11-21-2013 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/403582814064345088 https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/403577151737167872 https://twitter.com/mviser/status/403577482462240768 https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/403577524963123200

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2013 41 Comments
There is nothing too small to regulate. Or ban. Enter the doorknob, about to be banned in all new construction in Vancouver because ... why do you hate old people and those who have hand or arm disabilities? The Vancouver Sun reports:
In Vancouver, the doorknob is heading into a setting sun. Its future has been date-marked, legislated out of existence in all future construction, a tip to society’s quest for universal design and the easier-to-use lever handle. And as it goes in Vancouver, so will it go in B.C., Canada, and perhaps even the world..... And, as doorknobs go, so too will go those other ubiquitous knobs, the ones that turn on and off water faucets. For they too are being legislatively upgraded to levers more conducive to the arthritic, gnarled or weakened hands we earn with age. In September, Vancouver council adopted new amendments to its building code, effective next March, that, among other things, will require lever handles on all doors and lever faucets in all new housing construction.
A columnist at Popular Science is quite pleased (via Memeorandum):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2013 17 Comments
James O'Keefe's Project Veritas is out with another investigative video exposing highly questionable "cross-pollination" between Enroll America and Texas Democratic political operatives. Enroll America bills itself as:
a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to maximize the number of uninsured Americans who enroll in health coverage made available by the Affordable Care Act.
As such, Enroll America cannot get involved in any political activity. Project Veritas, however, discovered that a Texas-based Enroll America official was willing to push the limits (to put it charitably) or even break the law (to put it not charitably) in order to help someone he thought was a Democratic operative. Here's the explanation from the Project Veritas website, Enroll America Director Conspires to Release Private Data (emphasis in original):
Do you know where your personal data is going? After meeting with several Obamacare Navigators who openly encouraged our undercover reporters to lie about income status, health history and more, it became clear that personal data was also being “cross-pollinated.” Enter Enroll America, a Sebelius-linked group dedicated to signing people up for Obamacare and Chris Tarango, Texas Enroll America Communications Director who Project Veritas caught on tape agreeing to help obtain a private list of potential Obamacare enrollee data for election/political purposes. Tarango goes so far to say he’ll “Do whatever it f****** takes.”
Here's the video, the first 15 minutes of which are the edited video, the remainder the raw video: Eliana Johnson at National Review has a more complete explanation:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2013 36 Comments
So often we hear Democrats demand Republican capitulation on a host of issues -- some social, some economic -- because Republicans are on "the wrong side of history." That argument was made, in highly perjorative, eliminationist ways during the epic struggle of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and others to stop Obamacare before it inflicted more pain. That effort to stop Obamacare prior to the failed rollout of healthcare.gov was belittled by people like Timothy Egan in The New York Times as being on the Wrong Side of History, writing on October 3, 2013:
They are not righteous rebels or principled provocateurs. They are not constitutionalists, using the ruling framework built by the founders. Just the opposite: they are a militant fringe of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government trying to nullify an established law by extortion. This is not the design of the Constitution. Nor are they Martin Luther King Jr., or Rosa Parks or Winston Churchill — preposterous comparisons made on the floor of Congress by those whose only real fight is with progress.... We know now why Senator Ted Cruz, the most hated man in Washington, said he fears that once Obamacare is up and running people will like it — and then it will be too late for the obstructionists.... They wrecked the car, dug their own grave; no matter what you call it, history’s verdict came early.
Little did Egan or the others belittling the warnings about Obamacare realize that history's verdict would be against them; that Obamacare was it was not as it was sold and would cause Democrats to scramble for distance; that the Tea Party would be viewed as more in touch with American values than the ideology behind Obamacare; that big government would become the most hated thing outside Washington, even if Ted Cruz remained "the most hated man in Washington." The sweep of history is upon us, and it is not with the bigger government Democratic Party.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2013 10 Comments
The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee held a hearing yesterday on the cyber security of the healthcare.gov website. The prepared testimony is available on the Committee's website. The testimony of so-called "white hat hacker" David Kennedy reflected the findings in a report from TrustedSEC, LLC (full report embedded at bottom of post) which concluded:
What this analysis shows us is that as an attacker, there are known exposures in the healthcare.gov website today that could lead to significant compromise of the website and information. Additionally, the website is integrated into multiple agencies including some of the largest collections of United States citizen data – this includes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other federal agencies. Based on our evaluation of the website, we have serious concerns over the security of the website and the ability to protect information.
The testimony was featured on Greta: ABC News further reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2013 7 Comments

From W (no, not that W): Obama's Political Philosophy Represented on a bumper sticker. ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 19, 2013 7 Comments

There was a double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian Embassy in Beirut earlier today. There are at least 25 dead, including one diplomat. An al-Qaeda linked group is claiming credit, but the Iranians are blaming Israel. The bobming is assumed to be in retaliation for Iran's involvement in...

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