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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 February 07, 2019 18 Comments
There has been a fair amount of conservative frustration that the Trump administration was slow to get off the mark to renominate and start the confirmation process for judicial nominees held over from the last Congress. Particularly as to vacancies on the 9th Circuit, there were fears that the administration was cutting a bad deal with Democrats.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 06, 2019 41 Comments
Democrats are right to be worried that Elizabeth Warren's Native American controversy is eating away at her viability as a national general election candidate. The analogy to Hillary's emails is on point, an oozing campaign wound that saps the candidate's strength. The recent revelation that Warren signed her Texas State Bar registration card in 1986 as an "American Indian" comes on the heels of the disastrous DNA test rollout in October 2018.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 06, 2019 39 Comments
You can get my quick take on Trump's State of the Union address here. What did viewers generally think? According to "instant polls" SOTU was a hit.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2019 6 Comments
In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) became the first, and so far the only, major American academic association to adopt the academic boycott of Israel, part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). As I have documented, the BDS movement is a continuation of the anti-Jewish boycotts of the 1920s and 1930s in the then British Mandate for Palestine, the Arab League boycott of Jewish businesses (even prior to Israel's independence) and later of Israel, and the gross antisemitic activism at the 2001 Tehran and Durban conferences which launched boycotts in the current form.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2019 10 Comments
You remember the Extreme Ithaca Liberal campaign theme used successfully by Republican Representative Tom Reed in my home district NY-23? The Extreme Ithaca Liberal theme was used to beat well-financed liberal challengers over the head with a caricature of Ithaca liberals. It was a brilliant campaign theme because there was at least a kernel of truth to it, and the challenger didn't have to be from Ithaca for it to work.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 04, 2019 24 Comments
Neomi Rao is the nominee to fill the vacancy created on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals created when Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court after a vicious campaign against him. Rao's Judiciary Committee hearing is Tuesday, February 5. Senate Democrats and liberal interest groups are trying to attack Rao in order to damage her prospects for a future Supreme Court nomination and to serve as a warning that if she is nominated, they will Bork and Kavanaugh her.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 02, 2019 27 Comments
By the time you read this, Ralph Northam may or may not still be Governor of Virginia. He is paying the price for the gotcha racial politics he and Democrats use against others, except in this case there actually is a there there, in the form of his medical school yearbook photo showing him either in blackface or a Klan robe (not clear which he is), VA DEM Gov. Ralph Northam quickly moves from infanticide scandal to blackface/KKK yearbook mess.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 01, 2019 71 Comments
When Virginia legislator Kathy Tran explained on video that the "reproductive" rights bill being pushed by Virginia Democrats allowed for abortion on demand even during labor to protect the mental health of the mother, conservatives "pounced" and "seized" on it, in liberal media parlance. Not Democrat Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. He pulled a "hold my beer" move and in an interview defended post-birth abortion. If a child were delivered, according to Northam, the child would be kept comfortable while mother and medical staff talked about its fate.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 01, 2019 26 Comments
Elizabeth Warren launched her presidential exploratory committee on New Year's Eve day 2018, including the now-infamous beer drinking live stream. She is expected to launch her official campaign next week. Ever since her 2012 Senate campaign, Warren has attempted to shift the conversation away from her Native American controversy. The problem is two-fold.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 31, 2019 8 Comments
There is a growing recognition that the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is just a new form of the oldest hate, antisemitism. We have documented here many times how BDS has a direct connection to the anti-Jewish boycotts in the 1920s and 1930s in the then British Mandate for Palestine, the anti-Jewish boycott of the Arab League (which was put in place three years prior to Israeli's independence), and the gross antisemitic activism at the 2001 Tehran and Durban conferences which launched boycotts in the current form.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 30, 2019 63 Comments
There was a huge outcry in conservative media over the past couple of days regarding a deal allegedly being worked out with liberal Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, as to nominees to fill vacancies. We covered the issue in Trump has opportunity to flip the 9th Circuit, so why isn’t he?  Rush Limbaugh covered it today, linking to our post.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 30, 2019 51 Comments
Bringing the federal judiciary back to the center has been one of the great successes of Trump's first two years in office. As mentioned many times before, Trump was presented with an opportunity to realign the federal judiciary for a generation given the large number of Court of Appeals and District Court vacancies when he took office. Judicial nominations, particularly to the Supreme Court, were a core Trump campaign promise and a huge motivator for Republicans in 2016.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 29, 2019 34 Comments
The surest sign that Beto is running is that a leader of "Draft Beto 2020" just shared a video of Bernie Sanders on his honeymoon in the Soviet Unino 1988:
"Recently discovered footage from 1988 reveals a shirtless Bernie Sanders with his wife, Jane, on their honeymoon in the USSR, drunkenly signing “This Land Is Your Land” with a group of presumed Soviets."
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