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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 September 07, 2020 88 Comments
Democrats are setting the stage for something, what it is isn't yet exactly clear. They are moving in unison along with the mainstream media to predict that Biden will win the election based on mail-in ballots counted in the weeks after Election Day, Trump will refuse to leave office, and then ... well, then what?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 07, 2020 39 Comments
At 9:42 a.m. on Sunday, September 7, 2014, I received an email at our "contact" email address from an email account I did not recognize with the subject line "Mandy Nagy":

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 05, 2020 59 Comments
Everyone has been focused for the past two days on the story in The Atlantic, attributed to anonymous sources, about things Trump supposedly said about troops two years ago, something so far that every person who has gone on record has denied. While you were focused on that Crisis News Cycle, Trump took a step the implications of which could be devastating over time to the peddlers of racial conflict under the academic construct of Critical Race Theory.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 04, 2020 30 Comments
The media attacks on Trump have followed a pattern for years: A bombshell media report implicating Trump in wrongdoing, often dropped just before a weekend, which creates a media feeding frenzy for 2-4 days before it is completely disproven or seriously cast into doubt. As that crisis news cycle peters out, another bombshell is dropped, rinse and repeat.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2020 75 Comments
I have to hand it the GOP, I did not expect the Republican National Convention to be as effective and good as it was. It was the greatest show on earth for those four nights, driving home messaging that was extremely damaging to Joe Biden and reaching out to voter groups that are not traditional Republican voters.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2020 27 Comments
The last we checked in on Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the NY Times over a false editorial blaming an electoral map used by Palin for the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords by Jared Loughner. As we reported at the time of the shooting, there was no connection, it was a fabrication of left-wing bloggers that made its way into the mainstream.
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