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.
Pallywood is the industry of anti-Israel activists who spread fake images, stories and so on meant to portray Israelis in the worst possible light. Often the fakery is by western activists — you don’t have to be Palestinian to engage in Pallywood.
In all the dozens of Pallywood instances we have documented, I...
The totalitarian impulses of #TheResistance have been a focus here ever since the attempt soon after the 2016 election to intimidate Electoral College Electors into not honoring the vote in their states. Since then, whether through Antifa or more normalized liberals, anything goes so long as it seeks to unwind the...
By now, just about everyone has heard of Elizabeth Warren’s scandalous claim while she was climbing the law professor ladder to Harvard that she was Native American, despite the lack of substantiation.
If you hadn’t heard of it during...
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling that did not split on traditional ideological lines, upheld South Dakota’s ability to require that out-of-state internet sellers collect state sales tax on goods sold into South Dakota. The case involved the internet retailer Wayfair and South Dakota.
The case is being misrepresented in many...
Considering the depravity of the past few days, I thought this would be a good time for an update.
The featured image is the view tonight looking south from my backyard in Rhode Island. A hopeful sign.
The media-driven frenzy about separation of illegal immigrant children from their arrested parents is reaching insane heights. This is a problem which long predated Trump, and is caused by parents who expose their children to danger by bringing them illegally across the border, rather than presenting the family through lawful means...
I’m so old, I remember when two partisan gerrymandering cases in the Supreme Court — one from Wisconsin and one from Maryland — were on just about everyone’s list of blockbuster cases this term, including Bloomberg, Politico, and CNN, among many others.
The Wisconsin case involved a very pro-Republican legislative district map...
(This post will be “sticky” for a while.)
It’s that time of year when we ask readers to help keep us doing what we do. For those of you who are relatively new here, our 7th Anniversary post has a pretty good history of Legal Insurrection. Our current psychiatric condition is discussed...
When Amazon s***canned us from the Amazon Associates program, it made a point to tell us it was holding back and would not pay us any money we had accumulated as referral fees:
“…...
Have you noticed that in the last few days the issue of children separated from parents arrested while illegally crossing the Mexican border has become the latest anti-Trump fury and obsession. This is not a new issue, but is now dominating the media and social media landscape as so many other...
The Inspector General report not only explosed James Comey’s breach of protocol, there was a tidbit about Comey using his gmail account for FBI business.
That was like rubbing salt in Hillary Clinton’s wound.
Rudy Giuliani’s role in the Trump defense against the Mueller onslaught is part lawyer, and a bigger part public perception shaping.
About a month ago I wondered what Rudy was thinking when he suggested Trump should have a sit-down interview with Mueller, Rudy’s terrible, horrible, no good idea about Trump sitting for a...
Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally has sent someone to jail. Paul Manafort.
For nothing having to do with Russia or the Trump campaign.
The Supreme Court, in the case of Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, ruled that a Minnesota law that banned “political badge, political button, or other political insignia” at polling places on Election Day was unconstitutional.
The case was brought by voters who, among other things, wanted to wear a Tea Party Patriots...
The Department of Justice Inspector General has issued his report (pdf.) into the FBI/DOJ investigation of Hillary’s email server and decision not to prosecute.
Bottom line: Democrats got the narrative they wanted, that the FBI was not motivated by politics in exonerating Hillary, and that Comey made serious errors of judgment in...
Scott Wallace is the progressive Democratic nominee in the 1st Congressional District in Pennsylvania, running against Brian Fitzpatrick in the newly created district. Fitzpatrick is the current Representative in the soon-to-be extinct 8th District, which disappeared as part of judicially-ordered redistricting.
Wallace’s foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, was a funder...
In early May 2018, we covered a lawsuit brought by a new group called Speech First challenging U. Michigan’s Bias Response Teams, Lawsuit: U. Michigan speech code and Bias Response Team “profoundly chill free speech and open discourse”:
