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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 May 24, 2014 3 Comments
One of the big issues in Dr. Milton Wolf's challenge to Pat Roberts in the Kansas Republican Senate primary is that Roberts isn't a resident of Kansas. Roberts hasn't lived in Kansas in any meaningful sense for decades. Unless you consider renting a couch being a resident: So Wolf's campaign supporters filed a challenge to Roberts' ability to appear on the ballot because Roberts doesn't meet the residency requirement. The elections panel deciding the issue all had endorsed Roberts. although they sent "substitutes" to the meeting:
Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer and Attorney General Derek Schmidt, all Republicans who've endorsed Roberts, comprise the Objects Board. But all of them sent substitutes to the board meeting.
The Board qualified Roberts for the Ballot. Steve Kraske writes in The Kansas City Star, Sen. Pat Roberts’ residency in Kansas is a valid question:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 24, 2014 6 Comments

From Don: I saw this vehicle this afternoon while visiting my Mom at the hospital in Greensboro, NC. The pale yellow bumper sticker reads as follows: Somehow I don't think the owner would view conservative dissent in quite the same light. It's also another misattribution, which is common in...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 23, 2014 10 Comments
If it turns out that the campaign of Chris McDaniel was involved in the taping of Thad Cochran's wife in a nursing home, then it really doesn't matter who knew what when. The damage would be, and should be, a game changer. As of this writing, though, the proof either is not there or has not been made public. At most there is a cloud of suspicion because the alleged perpetrators were supporters and/or volunteers and/or prior acquaintances of McDaniel or the campaign. But if it turns out either that we don't get the answer until after the June 3 primary, or that the McDaniel campaign was not involved, then the fact that the story broke so close to the election is important. We know one of the reasons the story broke so late -- the Cochran campaign has admitted waiting at least two weeks to inform authorities. We don't know exactly how many weeks beyond two weeks. That pushed the story closer to the election which means we may not know the answer by June 3, which makes the seeming presumption of guilt based on the unknown potentially decisive. Erick Erickson suggested early on that there might have been collusion between the Cochran campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. I don't if that's true or not. One way to find out would be to find out when the NRSC, its staffers and strategists, found out about the taping. If there was collusion to delay the story until closer to the election, we should know that. If there was no collusion to delay the story, should know that too. And we should know it prior to the election. But as of this writing, I have not been able to get an answer to that question.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 23, 2014 14 Comments
Thomas Piketty is the new wonder-boy of redistributionists. The Financial Times reports, however, that his numbers are off, skewing his findings, Piketty findings undercut by errors (h/t Sean Davis):
Thomas Piketty’s book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, has been the publishing sensation of the year. Its thesis of rising inequality tapped into the zeitgeist and electrified the post-financial crisis public policy debate. But, according to a Financial Times investigation, the rock-star French economist appears to have got his sums wrong. The data underpinning Professor Piketty’s 577-page tome, which has dominated best-seller lists in recent weeks, contain a series of errors that skew his findings. The FT found mistakes and unexplained entries in his spreadsheets, similar to those which last year undermined the work on public debt and growth of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. The central theme of Prof Piketty’s work is that wealth inequalities are heading back up to levels last seen before the first world war. The investigation undercuts this claim, indicating there is little evidence in Prof Piketty’s original sources to bear out the thesis that an increasing share of total wealth is held by the richest few. Prof Piketty, 43, provides detailed sourcing for his estimates of wealth inequality in Europe and the US over the past 200 years. In his spreadsheets, however, there are transcription errors from the original sources and incorrect formulas. It also appears that some of the data are cherry-picked or constructed without an original source.
I think Rick Perry had a reaction once similar to what Piketty worshippers should be having:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 22, 2014 7 Comments
If you know any student at DePaul -- undergraduate or graduate -- you need to get them to vote against the anti-Israel divestment referendum. Unlike other divestment resolutions, this is put to a full student body vote, not just the student government. The vote is expected to be close. Every vote counts. You can help make a difference. Voting ends FRIDAY, May 23, 2014. Here's the link for students to log in and vote. Share it. STUDENT VOTING LOGIN As always happens on campuses, I'm hearing there is a pretty consistent campaign of intimidation and a university which only enforces the rules against on campus filming and campaigning against the pro-Israel students. (Videos via Paul Miller - YouTube and Twitter) Here's one of the pro-divestment students in an area of the student center taken over by pro-divestment students, who doesn't like his public conduct being videotaped:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 22, 2014 106 Comments
The 15,000+ word essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations, is getting completely predictable reactions. It's looooong, which gives it a perceived weight which just is not there.   In fact, there's not much new there, except for historical anecdotes shedding detail but not light on what we already knew to be the history of slavery, segregation and discrimination:
... the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them. .... No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.
Coates never gives the answer as to who gets what and how. And that's ultimately the problem with reparations arguments that are not based upon the people causing the harm paying the people directly harmed by specific conduct soon after the conduct is remedied.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 22, 2014 10 Comments
Supporters of Thad Cochran, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have all but convicted the campaign of Chris McDaniel in the possibly illegal -- but definitely disgusting -- photographing of Cochran's wife in a nursing home. While more evidence may, and likely will, come out, as of this writing there is no evidence made public that McDaniel's campaign itself was involved. If the facts are not known by the June 3 primary, the political presumption of guilt may be enough to sink the McDaniel campaign. What we know is that the guy who did the taping was a pro-Cochran blogger, but his lawyer denies it was part of a campaign effort. Based on tweets today from a court hearing by a local reporter, it appears that the blogger did it to make a name for himself. He succeeded in that, although perhaps not in the way he intended. Tweets Cochran wife taping hearing 5-22-2014 The big news today were three new arrests. A volunteer who contributed $500 to the McDaniel campaign, and is a leader of a local Tea Party group, was arrested for "conspiracy" with regard to the photographing.  He reportedly is a long-time Cochran opponent.  Two other people (for a total of three today) also were charged, one person for destroying evidence the other person for reasons not known as of this writing.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 21, 2014 5 Comments
Two days ago we asked, Did Indian election eviscerate BDS?, noting that election of a pro-Israel party and leader made likely vastly expanded business for Israel in India.  We noted also a massive joint academic research deal signed with China. It has just been announced that Israel had signed massive trade deals with various Chinese provinces, and 350 Chinese entrepreneurs attended a tech conference in Israel, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, Israel inks tech pacts with China’s Silicon Valley
Israel signed a bilateral industrial R&D cooperation agreement on Tuesday with China’s Zhejiang Province, known as the Silicon Valley of China, as 350 delegates from the Asian giant attended MIXiii, the Israel Innovation Conference. It also inked agreements with Jiangsu Province’s Science and Technology Department to promote Israeli companies’ participation in Chinese innovation parks and a first-of-its kind pilot program to encourage Israeli companies participation in the Changzhou Innovation Park in Jiangsu (population 79 million). “The science and technology of Israel need market potential and also market rules, and Zhejiang is a great partner,” Zhou Guohni, director- general of Zhejiang Province (population 55 million), told The Jerusalem Post at the signing in Tel Aviv. “We are facing a transformation and upgrade of the industry, and we need Israel’s technology to help transform and upgrade it.” The Economy Ministry’s Chief Scientist Avi Hasson said the agreement “will help many Israeli companies expand into the Chinese market and marks the next stage in the economic and technological relationship between our two countries.”
Read on, the expansion of ties is even wider than described above. Meanwhile, on campuses like UCLA, U. Michigan, Wesleyan and a dozen or two more, naive students are trying to get their student governments to call for divestment from selected companies doing business in Israel. The student governments have no power to effect divestment of university endowments, it's all symbolic. Sure, we're going to fight BDS vigorously, to the end, because it's malicious. Witness what happened at Vassar, where SJP actually posted a Nazi cartoon and cited white supremacists for their anti-Zionist theories.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 20, 2014 21 Comments

Kentucky

Well, that was quick. Major media have called the race for Mitch McConnell. Erick Erickson says he donated to McConnell even before the polls closed. Rally around the Mitch?

Georgia

You can follow the incoming returns at the AP Election website and at Politico.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 20, 2014 15 Comments
I haven't focused much on the Mississippi Republican Senate primary, in which Chris McDaniel is challenging Thad Cohran, except to have previously noted that NRSC race card play against challenger hurts us all. But the latest intrigue makes what came before look like child's play.  Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit at Hot Air have background, but the story is fairly simple:  A pro-McDaniel blogger was caught sneaking into a nursing home where Cochran's wife was resident due to Alzheimers or some other form of dementia, and photographed her.  Very ugly stuff. Then things got even more strange when the Cochran campaign and NRSC suggested that McDaniel somehow might be involved, and that inconsistent statements as to how and when the McDaniel campaign found out about it were incriminating. Then, it turned out that the Cochran campaign itself knew about the break in but sat on it for two weeks before notifying authorities. The NRSC communications director who was tweeting with wild speculation about the McDaniel timeline has not, as of this writing, responded to my request as to when the NRSC found out about it. Erick Erickson thinks there's collusion between the Cochran campaign and NRSC to pin the blame, at least by innuendo, on McDaniels. The latest development is that the blogger's wife suggests in an interview that McDaniels, at least indirectly, was in on it:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 20, 2014 25 Comments
We previously covered Dinesh D'Souza's indictment on campaign finance fraud based on reimbursing others for campaign donations. The case stunk of selective prosecution, but selective prosecution is not a legal defense except in the most extreme circumstances. If you are caught speeding, it's not a defense that others were speeding too. Today D'Souza pleaded guilty, as reported at Townhall:
Author and conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza plead guilty this morning to one count on federal charges detailed in an indictment accusing him of violating campaign finance laws and making false statements. D'Souza admitted in front of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, that he did in fact ask two people to make contributions in their name and later reimbursed them, knowing it was not proper under the law. D'Souza submitted a plea deal on May 19. Judge Richard Berman accepted his guilty plea today and set a sentencing date for September 23, 2014. The government argued attorneys would be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant, D'Souza, is guilty. There will be no trial by jury in this case. "Guilty your honor," D'Souza said, adding that he deeply regrets his actions. "The plea is now accepted and Mr. D'Souza is now guilty under the indictment," Berman replied. By entering a guilty plea, D'Souza waived his right to appeal and his right to sentence modification or reduction. He faces a maximum of two years in prison, three years supervised release and a $250,000 fine. There is no parole in the federal system. His right to vote, right to hold public office, right to possess a firearm and right to sit on a jury have been revoked.
There are at least two lessons here:
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