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.
"This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle...
My appearance on Fox Business Network, covering Biden's death row commutations, likely future pardons to protect his family and Trump persecutors, and youth support for the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO....
It was a turning point in the war launched by Hezbollah on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas after its October 7 attack on Israel....
"The review of Ivy League practices by our CriticalRace.org project reflects substantial efforts by Ivy League schools to purport to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action, while maintaining work-arounds and DEI practices that continue the obsession with racial identities."...
"I wish Governor DeSantis the best of luck with this appointment"...
My appearance on The Federalist Radio Hour: "[The federal government] needs to say to these schools that you cannot engage in discrimination, you cannot violate the law and keep your federal funding, and we will pull it. Pull it for one or two universities, and...
Chauvin seeks to vacate his guilty plea in federal court due to ineffective assistance of counsel for allegedly failing to inform Chauvin of an expert witness who asserted Floyd died of heart failure unrelated to Chauvin's conduct, and for failing to conduct testing. This is...
"the evidence related to the preserved claims relate entirely to unofficial conduct and thus, receive no immunity protections"...
Report by Andrew Fox of the British Henry Jackson Society: "We have identified distortion of statistics, misreporting of natural deaths, deaths from before the war started and a high likelihood of combatant deaths being included on the list."...
"We're going to seek to make URI a test case for the Trump administration"...
Mangione shouted out about "lived experience" as he was led into the courthouse, but his lived experience was one of privilege....
WKU terminated discriminatory Athletics Minority Fellowship, which excluded whites from participation. We would have been just as happy if WKU kept the fellowshp but opened it up to everyone, but WKU chose otherwise....
We have to stop this system where, for political reasons, we are all at risk....
Jury deliberations on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide will continue Monday after Judge granted prosecution's request to drop manslaughter to avoid a mistrial....
The jury in the Daniel Penny trial has been deliberating for three days, and it just informed the Judge that it is unable to reach a verdict on the most serious charge, manslaughter in the second degree....
"three to four years of people like us and others, many others, hammering on [DEI] has changed the culture when it comes to DEI. And so now political change I think is possible because the culture has changed."...
Case filed by Equal Protection Project and Pacific Legal Foundation. Court rules: "plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that their children have been treated differently than members of the historically underrepresented minorities included in the STEP eligibility criteria...
"They're not angry that Joe Biden pardoned his son. They're not angry that he lied about it for years. They're angry that they feel that this had given an advantage to Trump."...
