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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 March 21, 2014 23 Comments

Giving California Crazy a run for its money. From @SGLawrence: This Prius was parked in Edgewater, the hottest, newest and trendiest section of Miami, Florida, where condominiums are now being snapped up for $400-$600/square foot. (A bargain, still, compared to South Beach and some sections of downtown...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 20, 2014 23 Comments
University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor Michael Adams has won his discrimination lawsuit, in a jury verdict rendered today. The judge now will rule on damages. The Jury Verdict form and Judgment are embedded at the bottom of this post. Adams was the professor who wrote the viral response to another professor who called Adams an "embarrassment" to higher education. The case involved claims that Adams was subjected to discriminatory retaliation for expressing his Christian religious and politically conservative views. We have uploaded the Amended Complaint and Answer to the Amended Complaint. Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Adams, described the case as follows:
Dr. Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington, frequently received accolades from his colleagues after the university hired him as an assistant professor in 1993 and promoted him to associate professor in 1998. At the time he was an atheist, but his conversion to Christianity in 2000 impacted his views on political and social issues. After this, he was subjected to intrusive investigations, baseless accusations, and the denial of promotion to full professor even though his scholarly output surpassed that of almost all of his colleagues. In a lawsuit filed against the university on Adams’ behalf, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys contended that the university denied Adams a promotion because his nationally syndicated opinion columns espoused religious and political views that ran contrary to the opinions held by university officials.
The jury found that Adams' "speech activity [was] a substantial or motivating factor in the defendants' decision to not promote" Adams, and that the defendants' would not have reached the same decision "in the absence of the plaintiff's speech activity". Adams v UNC - Wilmington - Jury Verdict Form Answers The Judge now will resolve the damages, as set forth in the Judgment:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 19, 2014 14 Comments
Face it, Obama has structured key portions of U.S. foreign policy on Vlad Putin playing nice. Iran nukes? Check. Syria chemical weapons and civil war? Check. Egypt shifting allegiances? Check. Nuclear arms treaty compliance? Check. Central and Eastern Europe territorial integrity? Check. On what key issues does Putin need Obama? Yeah, now Vlad is threatening to leave the relationship and take all the prized possessions with him. Via AP, Russia warns West it may change its stance on Iran:
Russia may revise its stance in the Iranian nuclear talks amid tensions with the West over Ukraine, a senior diplomat warned Wednesday. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to the Interfax news agency, that Russia didn't want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to "raise the stakes," but may have to do so in response to the actions by the United States and the European Union. The statement is the most serious threat of retaliation by Moscow after the U.S. and the EU announced sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. Ryabkov, who is Russia's envoy to the Iranian talks, said that Russia considers the "reunification" with Crimea as far more important than the developments surrounding the Iranian nuclear program.
The featured image, a Branco Cartoon from September 2013, still rings true. So does this photoshop that made the rounds:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 19, 2014 6 Comments
We reported previously on Anti-Israel student group suspended at Northeastern for vandalism, intimidation, disruption. That group was Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Ilya Feoktistov has an excellent write-up on the group at FrontPage Mag, including images of its leader, law student Max Geller, wearing a Hezbollah t-shirt and carrying a weapon in the Palestinian Territories. A rally in support of Northeastern SJP was held on March 18. The rally was hyped in advance by anti-Israel websites like Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, and among branches at SJP at numerous universities. The co-sponsors included a wide range of left-wing groups: Northeastern SJP Rally Press Release Co Sponsors The expectation was that there would be a mass rally. It didn't turn out that way. There were at most about 200 protesters according to participants. It's pretty obvious from photos and video that many if not most of the protesters were not even students, but a coalition of local (and rather aged) activists and some union members with gripes unrelated to Israel: Calling the President of Northeastern a "Zionist Goon," as reflected in the video, was bad enough, and was typical of the attacks. https://twitter.com/conorkelly94/status/445931489898024960 Chanting "Long Live the Intifada" was much worse.  The Second Intifada alone caused the deaths of approximately 1000 Israelis and 3000 Palestinians. Supporters of Venezuela and the Hugo Chavez socialism agenda were handing out flyers:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2014 10 Comments

A comment to our bumper sticker post, Guide to California Crazy, inspired a response from reader JoAnne: Just wanted to add this picture to prove Alex's hypothesis! And just another reason we left California! This pic is from 2006 but she changed the signs to go...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 16, 2014 28 Comments
From LukeHandCool, a handy Guide to California Crazy, with commentary:
Came across this motorized billboard on a corner of Wilshire Boulevard on L.A.'s Westside after dropping the son off at school. He's becoming quite a politically incorrect joker and I'd just given him a little lecture to be cautious around his teachers; that it's much safer to give the teacher a rotten, non-organic, non-fair-trade apple than to challenge his/her political sensibilities. Anyway, behold the peak of evolution of the car as pop-art-political statement. I call it, "Driving the Narrative: When Life Imitates Art Imitating Life: A Conversation with Still Life." 1) "Marriage = heart + heart." My wife has disproved this theory. 2) "Democracies Die Behind Closed Doors." Whereupon they go to The Afterlife on the backs of cars. 3) "Earth Without Art is Just 'Eh.'" Spoken like a true cavewoman. 4) "Imagine What We Could Accomplish if We Weren't so Afraid of Each Other." You first. 5) "The Most Powerful Mind-Altering Substance is the Truth." Yeah, but I suspect the buzz it gives you won't feel too good, lady. 6) "The Time to do the Right Thing is Always Now." Tony Robbins just gagged. 7) "Got Aloha?" Yeah. You? 8) "I'm Already Against the Next War." Oh! You're a Prepper!

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 15, 2014 3 Comments

From W.: McDonald's parking lot, Port Chester, NY. Vehicle left before I could get a distinctive political pic, but driver rolls with the left! Rolls with the left? More like rolls joints: ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 14, 2014 31 Comments

Even though some meaningful immigration changes could pass Congress, Democrats want full amnesty, and will settle for nothing else.  All other immigration reforms are held hostage to that demand. Unable to move the Republican House on amnesty (yet), the Obama administration has been going it alone...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 14, 2014 14 Comments
Much speculation today, apparently confirmed by Fox News:
Fox News has confirmed that former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has told the network that he will file an exploratory committee for the New Hampshire Senate race. His contract with the network has been canceled, as is standard practice for candidates for office. “Scott Brown’s contributor agreement was officially terminated today once he notified Fox News of his intention to form an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire," Fox News executive vice president of programming Bill Shine said.
Is it for real, or just exploratory?
Several people involved in the discussions about Brown's future said some in the GOP establishment remain skeptical, given the former Republican senator's recent track record. Brown, 54, angered Massachusetts Republicans last year after indicating he would run in the state's special U.S. Senate election, only to change his mind late in the process. "He's been reaching out to opinion leaders, to grass-roots activists, getting a sense of, `Would you be supporting a Scott Brown campaign?"' said former New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, who is running again for Congress and was included in Brown's outreach efforts. "That, to me, says he's serious. But I think only Scott Brown knows if Scott Brown is going to run."
If Brown runs, I don't know if we'll cover the race the way we did in 2010, when we were the first and almost the only one giving him a chance against Martha Coakley, and we turned the blog "all Scott Brown, all the time" as the rest of the internet caught on. Our election night coverage and celebration was epic. And then we said Bye-Bye Brown as his Senate performance and positions disappointed. Only to get sucked back into the 2012 campaign against Warren when her fake Indian status surfaced. We ended up driving many of the issues in that race, although I don't think there was anything that was going to stop Massachusetts from electing Warren, not even had she driven drunk and left a girl to die like the namesake of the Kennedy Seat. Jim Geraghty has early analysis of the race against Jeanne Shaheen. So if Brown runs in NH, what does it mean for Legal Insurrection? Resist we much. Update: It's official official --

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 14, 2014 4 Comments
Democrat Martha Robertson, the Emily's List-backed, "Red to Blue" challenger in NY-23 just can't seem to escape local news coverage of her apparently false fundraising claim that GOP operatives were "caught" trying to take down her website during a critical fundraising period.

Martha Robertson fundraising email partial

Legal Insurrection broke the story in early October 2013, and we have followed the details since then: The latest bad publicity for Robertson regards her response to a complaint filed with the NY State Board of Elections, as reported by WETM:
The controversy over an e-mail sent by Martha Roberton’s campaign to supporters last September continues. Now, the National Republican Congressional Committee is getting involved. The NRCC is asking the Martha Robertson campaign to release all correspondence related to the e-mail her campaign sent to supporters on September 30th, 2013. The NRCC is looking for correspondence that is not protected by attorney-client privilege. In that September e-mail, the Robertson campaign claimed that “GOP ops” had hacked their website right before the end of the third quarter fundraising deadline. The Robertson campaign provided proof of their hacking claims in October of 2013, but decided not to hire an outside firm to investigate, despite previously saying they would.
In a letter sent by the Robertson campaign to the NY State Board of Elections, Robertson repeats her claim that there were attacks on the website but no longer claims that it has any proof whatsoever that the GOP was involved, much less that GOP operatives were "caught" (emphasis added):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 13, 2014 4 Comments
We previously wrote about the lawfare against Ezra Levant, We Stand With Ezra. The case now is in trial, and Ezra has an update: You can donate to Ezra's defense fund here. After you donate, sit back and enjoy Ezra’s Opening Statement in the 2008 Human Rights Commission case brought against him over the publication of the Mohammed cartoon:
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