Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Author: William A. Jacobson

Profile photo

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 October 18, 2023 4 Comments

We have removed a video that may not be verified. The other posts regarding Hamas' brutality remain....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 17, 2023 11 Comments
There have been increasing exchanges of fire on Israel's border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been firing at Israelis and Israel firing back. While several people have been killed on each side, it has not as of this writing broken out into a full war. That could change at any moment. If that happens, expect thousands of heavy and guilded missiles to be fired by Hezbollah at Israel, and heavy Israeli air and missile attacks on Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon. Expect also a land invasion by Hezbollah, which has been very openly touting its capabilities to grab and hold Israeli towns and territories. One such town which certainly will be attacked is Metula, which is a land peninsula surrounded on three sides by Lebanon. In 2013, I visited Metula, and was given a tour (from the Israeli side of the border) of a fake village Hezbollah had constructed as a launching point to attack Israel. I'm re-running that post, so when you hear in the news about Metula, you will have a better understanding: Metula and the fake Hezbollah village. -------------------- The last in my series of posts from Israel: After leaving the Valley of Tears battle monument, we descended from the Golan Heights towards Israel's northernmost town, Metula. But along the way, we stopped at the Druze town of Mas'ade for lunch at the Nedal Restaurant.  Here's the view towards Mount Hermon (lost then recaptured during the 1973 Yom Kippur War) from in front of the restaurant: [caption id="attachment_60845" align="alignnone" width="501"](Mas'ade Druze Village Israel, looking towards Mount Hermon) (Mas'ade Druze Village Israel, looking towards Mount Hermon)[/caption] You can see on this map how far north Metula is: [caption id="attachment_60711" align="alignnone" width="505"](Metula, Israel - Map View) (Metula, Israel - Map View)[/caption] These map view give a good perspective on how Metula is surrounded on three sides by Lebanon: [caption id="attachment_60710" align="alignnone" width="464"](Metula, Israel - Street Map View) (Metula, Israel - Street Map View)[/caption]

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 15, 2023 28 Comments

First Amended Complaint adds new claim: "Project Veritas is entitled to a declaration that it is the real copyright holder in Breakthrough, American Pravda, and American Muckraker," and wants "disgorging all income received by O'Keefe" from those books....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 14, 2023 51 Comments
In light of what is happening now in Israel, I've decided to repost “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people” which I first ran on January 2, 2016. I'm running it again because I've seen a number of comments here and elsewhere, that boil down to: "it's not our problem." I disagree. What happens in the Middle East, or Europe, or elsewhere with our close allies is our problem - what we do about it is a different matter. Something being our problem doesn't mean we have to invade and occupy another country, we could decide to do nothing or something less than going to war. But pretending "it's not our problem" is just pretending. The war against the Jews is also the war against the Christians - the U.S. is the "Great Satan" to the Islamists, and Israel is the Little Satan. Anyway, here's the post, again: ------------ I'm surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today. Though I'm certainly familiar with the concept, it's one we've explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivous (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews. I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer's Tweet linking to his Facebook post:
Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 13, 2023 22 Comments

My column in The Spectator (U.S.): "The use of the term “Resistance” to defend the mass murder and rapes against Israelis is no coincidence. HAMAS is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement)...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 12, 2023 36 Comments
Fifteen years ago today was the first blog post at Legal Insurrection. So much has changed since I started that solo blog on Google Blogger.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 11, 2023 62 Comments

We have shown some images and videos in prior posts, while being sensitive to the dignity of the dead. None of them have been as horrifying as this. Much like the Holocaust, it's important to document what has happened because there will be deniers, and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 10, 2023 13 Comments
We have been trying to document the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that, at latest count, killed over 1200 people in Israel. What is more striking than even the death toll is the sheer barbarity of these medieval Islamic-supremacist killers - taunting, torturing, humiliating in ways unimaginable to normal humans.
Accessibility by WAH