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.
We have been here sooooooo many times before.
A media outlet publishes an article based on anonymous sources providing information that is so vague it cannot be proven or disproven, but which purports to (1) implicate Trump in a crime, (2) show collusion with the Russians, and/or (3) raise enough suspicions to...
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a town hall on January 15, 2019, at Brock University in Canada.
During the town hall, someone requested that Trudeau renounce Trudeau’s prior strong condemnation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement.
Nancy Pelosi has sent a letter to Trump demanding that Trump postpone the State of the Union address because of the partial government shutdown.
#TheResistance is thrilled.
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Captain Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City when the Airbus plane he was flying hit a flock of birds, lost engine capacity, and had to try an emergency landing.
Not just any emergency...
Donald Trump hosted the Clemson Tigers championship football team at the White House.
Trump served fast food hamburgers to the team. The media lost its mind.
Two supposed bombshell reports about Trump-Russia collusion rocked the media news cycle this weekend, but as all of the other bombshells dropped by the media, there is a lot less to the reports than the hype suggests.
The hype has given rise to a Manchurian Candidate
Israel’s Operation Northern Shield continues to uncover Hezbollah attack tunnels dug from Lebanese civilian areas under the border into northern Israel.
The purpose of the tunnels was to surprise Israel in the next war by infiltrating special Hezbollah commando units who have been tasked with capturing an Israeli town or border community....
Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat Representative from Hawaii, is a strange political bird.
A November 2017 profile of Gabbard in The New Yorker described her as follows:
The Democrat primaries haven’t even begun, yet Democrats already are pulling livestream publicity stunts to get attention.
And in the process, raising *troubling* questions as to how far they will go.
85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has suffered multiple health setbacks in recent months.
She fell and broke some ribs, and then had cancerous tumors removed from her lungs. Recovery from the lung surgery caused Ginsburg to miss
The NY Times broke a story asserting that Paul Manafort passed secret polling data to a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Russian intelligence:
For the past couple of years, there has been an increasing concern that tech giants, particularly social media giants, were making highly politicized decisions as to who they kicked off their platforms.
A conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones was kicked off Twitter (and deplatformed elsewhere) while anti-Trump c...
President Trump just delivered his Address to the Nation on the need for a border wall.
It was short, under 10 minutes.
Rashida Tlaib is a new Palestinian-American congresswoman from the Detroit area.
She’s also an Israel hater and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is a modern version of the anti-Jewish boycotts dating back at least to the 1920s in the then British Mandate for Palestine. (See my lecture, The...
Did you hear the one about Republicans trying to shame Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her college dance video, and being angry about it?
That claim echoed through many mainstream media outlets late last week into the weekend. But it was a media fabrication, Fake News in the worst, most devious way intended to...
Likability as a political asset for a candidate is a “you know it when you see it” quality.
It’s not the same thing as “approval” or “favorability” or whether you actually “like” the candidate. And it’s something that can’t be taught or learned.
There are numerous reports of an explosion at the home of a senior Palestinian terrorist in southern Gaza resulting from a so-called “work accident.”
The Times of Israel reports:
