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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.

Attorney General William Barr, the second most hated man among the anti-Trump resistance, gave his detractors something to love today: Obama and Biden are not, and based on what Barr knows will not, be subject to criminal investigation in connection with John Durham's investigation of the Russia collusion hoax:

HoganWillig is a multi-office law firm in western New York State. Among its practice areas is real estate closings, which enabled it to obtain designation from the state as an "essential" business even under Andrew Cuomo's coronavirus lockdown orders. The firm also has gained expertise in advising businesses how to weather the coronavirus regulatory storm, and now finds itself in the center of one of those storms as the New York Attorney General's Office has been threatening the firm over its continued real estate operations, claiming the firm was not complying with Cuomo's Orders. The firm is fighting back with a federal court lawsuit.

There was a time in the long ago past that we did Open Threads. Basically opening the floor to whatever you wanted to talk about in the comment section. I have a lot of topics on my plate, but every now and then you need to stop and pause.

In my post last night, I suggested that Judge Emmett Sullivan likely was in the process of deciding who to appoint to argue the government's (former) position as to whether DOJ would be permitted to drop the case, Judge in Michael Flynn case may allow ‘amicus’ briefs on whether to drop case – is there reason for freak out?

The Department of Justice, after concluding that the prosecution of Michael Flynn was the product of misconduct by FBI and DOJ officials, moved to drop the case against Flynn. But not so fast. Flynn pleaded guilty, a plea that the DOJ motion to drop the charges calls into question. A judge has discretion whether to allow a case to be dropped, but normally if the prosecution doesn't want to prosecute, a judge will not force a prosecution. But where a guilty plea has been entered and accepted by the court, and a motion to withdraw the plea rejected by the court, the court has a lot more power because the prosecution, in a sense, is over already. Only sentencing remains.

Just under two months ago, when the nation was under its first "15-days to flatten the curve," I wrote that the situation could not hold, that shutting down the economy was not a sustainable long-term plan. My estimation was that the inflection point would come sometime in May, June at the very latest. I was right. The inflection point has arrived.

Events are moving quickly, converging on the subterfuge and subversion by Team Obama. Team Obama was behind the Flynn set up. Obama was in on it, and so were others. How deep Obama's own hands go into the spying on the Trump transition remains to be seen, but Obama's staged "leak" criticizing DOJ is a tell.

Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College has received enormous media attention, and even *a few* posts here. Another Oberlin College case we have followed involved an expelled Oberlin College male student (we'll call him "John Doe No. 1") who alleged that the Oberlin College sexual assault hearing process was so rigged against men that it had a 100% conviction rate for cases that went to hearing, at least during the period of time relevant to that case. Now there is another lawsuit by a different student raising similar issues of an allegedly biased campus process.

Megyn Kelly released on YouTube a 42-minute interview with Tara Reade, who has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault in 1993. While Team Biden has gone after Reade for inconsistencies in her story over time, there also have been corroborating witnesses and documents that show she told others about the assault, or at least problems with Biden, at the time and in the early years after that.

Republican Governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker shut down all gun stores in the state as part of a supposedly health-related measure to fight the spread of Wuhan coronavirus. A group of citizens and foundations sued, filing a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction (pdf.), seeking among other things, an Order:

After a monumental compensatory and punitive damages jury verdict in favor of Gibson's Bakery and its owners against Oberlin College and its Dean of Students, the college launched a public relations campaign claiming, among other things, that the Gibsons really were racist even though the jury found the accusation of racial profiling false and defamatory. For those of you new to this issue, see the following posts regarding the post-trial public relations campaign: