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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 October 24, 2013 59 Comments
We have highlighted here many times the almost insane "zero tolerance" policies at school wherein students are disciplined, suspended and expelled for biting a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, bringing Quarter coin-sized gun keychain charms to school, and even pointing a pencil and saying "bang." And then there is this, a full-sized "toy" AK-47 which got a 13-year old shot by police, Authorities investigate fatal deputy-involving shooting of 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy:
Sonoma County sheriff's deputies shot and killed a 13-year-old boy Tuesday afternoon during an encounter in a southwest Santa Rosa neighborhood. The boy's father, Rodrigo Lopez, identified the teen as Andy Lopez and said he had been carrying a toy gun that belonged to a friend. Santa Rosa and Petaluma police detectives are investigating the shooting. Interviews were conducted throughout Tuesday night, Santa Rosa Lt. Paul Henry said Wednesday morning.... It was unclear Tuesday whether the rifle, which sheriff's officials characterized as a replica, was capable of firing BBs or other projectiles.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 24, 2013 13 Comments
We've written before about the travails of the Canadian Blazing Cat Fur blog against laware utilizing Canadian "hate" laws. Now Ezra Levant, another Canadian blogger and outspoken critic of radical Islamic tactics in Canada, is fighting in court over a lawsuit filed several years ago, as reported in the Globe and Mail:
Controversial television journalist Ezra Levant will find himself in court Oct. 15 to answer for a series of blog posts in which he repeatedly called a Canadian Islamic Rights activist a liar. Mr. Levant, who hosts a daily show on Sun News Network, wrote the posts while covering unsuccessful human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine for its coverage of the Islamic community over a two-year span. Mr. Levant’s posts were critical of Khurrum Awan, a member of the Canadian Islamic Congress who spoke at the Canadian Human Rights Commission hearings and served as its youth president. In his statement of claim filed to Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Mr. Awan said Mr. Levant suggested he was “a liar, a perjurer, an anti-Semite, a con artist, unfit to be a lawyer and has acted in a conflict of interest.” “The plaintiff has suffered mental distress, humiliation and loss of reputation,” reads the statement of claim filed by lawyer Brian Shiller of Ruby Shiller Chan Hasan Barristers. “The plaintiff has been shunned by former friends, ridiculed in various publications and is the subject of odium and contempt.” In his statement of defence, Mr. Levant suggests any damage to Mr. Awan’s reputation was self-inflicted.
In an October 15, 2013, column at Sun News, Price of freedom is high, Levant explained the history of lawfare against him:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 24, 2013 5 Comments

From Buckeyeminuteman, with the Subject line: How About Spending Control? Here is an SUV I saw in Montgomery, AL. The driver makes a good point about our politician's priorities. Also, I wanted to take this time to tell you thank you for the great work you...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 30 Comments
Legal Insurrection, with the help of Judicial Watch, still is fighting the FOIA litigation to get a full document production from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and D.C. Office of Attorney General Irvin Nathan as to the investigation and non-prosecution of David Gregory and others at NBC News for the clear on-camera violation of the D.C. gun laws. NBC procured, and Gregory flaunted, an illegal 30-round ammunition magazine even though NBC was explicitly warned by the MPD not to do so:

Gregory OAG Email Dec 21 2012 NBC to MPD3

Gregory got special treatment. Not so many other more ordinary citizens. The latest outrageous case of D.C. overreach and bullying of citizens who are not David Gregory is documented by Emily Miller at The Washington Times (via The Patriot Perspective), D.C. businessman faces two years in jail for unregistered ammunition, brass casing:
Mark Witaschek, a successful financial adviser with no criminal record, is facing two years in prison for possession of unregistered ammunition after D.C. police raided his house looking for guns. Mr. Witaschek has never had a firearm in the city, but he is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The trial starts on Nov. 4. The police banged on the front door of Mr. Witaschek’s Georgetown home at 8:20 p.m. on July 7, 2012, to execute a search warrant for “firearms and ammunition … gun cleaning equipment, holsters, bullet holders and ammunition receipts.” Mr. Witaschek’s 14-year-old daughter let inside some 30 armed officers in full tactical gear.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 36 Comments
Joan Walsh of Salon.com threw a classic Salon.com race-card fit the other day because Ted Cruz referred to healthcare.gov as being run by Nigerial scam artists:
Hey, did you hear the one about the disappearing “Nigerian email scammers”? They’ve “become a lot less active lately” because they’ve “all been hired to run the Obamacare website.” That’s Sen. Ted Cruz, folks, on his Reactionary Real America Victory Tour Monday night, and he’ll be here all week, maybe all decade. Tip your waiter! Declaring that our first black president’s signature policy achievement is being run by “Nigerian email scammers” is GOP dog-whistle politics at its finest. Of course, Cruz wasn’t just going for cheap laughs at the expense of the Affordable Care Act. He knows it’s a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya for his Obama-hating Houston audience.

Twitter - @Salon - Nigerian scammer dog whistle

It's actually not a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya, over 2000 miles, but whatever. I think the Nigerian scam artist analogy fits, although there is no single perfect analogy for the redistribution of wealth scheme that is Obamacare. The American people were promised one thing, and are receiving another.  The thing they were promised -- you can keep your doctor and your insurance, and pay less through easy to use exchanges -- never existed, any more than "Mohammed Abacha,the son of the late Nigerian Head of State." But since we have to be absurdly sensitive to "short hops" from Nigeria to Kenya so as to stay off of Salon.com's radar, perhaps we can refer to healthcare.gov, and Obamacare more generally, as BernieMadoff.healthcare.gov.  Again, not a perfect analogy, but it demonstrates a point.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 36 Comments
Kathleen Sebelius is insistent that no one told Obama prior to October 1 that testing and evaluation had indicated healthcare.gov likely would fail. Not even as a government "shutdown" was looming over the issue of delaying the individual mandate for a year?  Even though an inoperable healthcare.gov website would justify the Republican position?  Even though a failure of the website would be a major embarrassment? HHS chief: President didn't know of Obamacare website woes beforehand
President Barack Obama didn't know of problems with the Affordable Care Act's website -- despite insurance companies' complaints and the site's crashing during a test run -- until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation's health chief told CNN on Tuesday. In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in "the first couple of days" after the site went live October 1. "But not before that?" Gupta followed up. To which Sebelius replied, "No, sir."
This all sounds eerily familiar:

WaPo IRS Scandal No One Told Obama

Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 33 Comments

We've seen years of offensive name calling and antics from Alan Grayson. He called a Federal reserve lobbyist a whore, and most famously claimed that Republicans want people to die quickly. Grayson's latest, however, is his worst yet, via NRO, Dem Rep. Uses Burning KKK Cross to...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 19 Comments
At first I thought this was a joke, a parody.  But it's real. As part of it "ingenius" marketing, a coalition of progressive groups has started a Thanks Obamacare website and Twitter account. The Colorado affiliate has produced the ads imaged above. This is Obamacare on drugs. They should tax the keg as a medical device, and then see how much the Bros love their Obamacare. Here's the full set of ads, most of which encourage dangerous behavior because, hell, they've got Obamacare:

Thanks Obamacare Ads

Here are some of the individual ads, with my commentary:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 26 Comments
Greg Pollowitz at National Review asked, Which Is Worse: ‘High Cheekbones’ or ‘Redskins’?
A few things are bothering me about Bob Costas calling the term “Redskins” a slur on Sunday night. One, Democrats had absolutely no issue when then senate candidate Elizabeth Warren justified her Native American heritage with her “high cheekbones.” That’s the same as me saying, “Can’t you see I’m half-Jewish from the size of my nose?” If it was anybody but liberal-darling Warren, there would be outrage at her saying such a thing. But since Democrats have tacitly endorsed “high cheekbones” as politically acceptable, I vote to rename the Redskins “The High Cheekbones.” The song even works, “Hail to the Cheekbones! Hail Victory!”
For those of you who don't remember, Elizabeth Warren supposedly (doubtfully) relied on "family lore" to justify checking the Native American box in order to get herself put on a short list of "Minority Law Teachers" and "Women of Color in Legal Academia" as she was climbing the law school ladder towards Harvard Law School.  Among those stories (now cast in doubt) was about her Aunt Bea and high cheekboned ancestors:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 26 Comments

It's not just 5 million lines of code, folks. It's not just having to call Verizon to the rescue. It's not just that it doesn't work now. The Healthcare.debacle website is a harbinger of doom because it reflects the fundamental inability of government to run such a sweeping...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 13 Comments
Dick Cheney appeared on Hannity, and stated what all thinking people know to be true, Obama is the radical in Washington, D.C., not the Tea Party: FMR VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: I'm not unsympathetic to the frustration, I think, that's led many Americans to sign on for or become part of the tea party. I'm as frustrated as anybody else can be, but I think we have a situation where the circumstances in Washington, the inability and the unwillingness of the this administration to come to grips with our basic long-term debt problem, for example. The frustration out there is very, very high. And so when I see people talking about the tea party, I don't think of the tea party as extremists the way some of the folks in Washington want to describe them. The extremist in Washington is Barack Obama. He's the guy that wants to fundamentally transform our health care system. He's the guy who has done enormous damage to America's standing in the world. To the extent there is an extremist or radical political view in Washington these days, I believe it is the president of the United States.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 12 Comments

It's the dawn of a new era in TaxProf's quarterly law professor blog rankings, as he explains, Law Prof Blog Traffic Rankings: Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings by page views of the Top 50 blogs edited by law professors for the most recent 12-month...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2013 11 Comments
One week ago we posted about how a new website exposed The Truth About Palestinian Rock Throwing. We featured a video exposing the The Wadi'a Maswadah Hoax, about a 5-year old Palestinian rock thrower allegedly "arrested" by the IDF.  In fact, the child was brought to his parents, contrary to media hype, which ignored a culture that pushes young children to the front lines.

Wadi'a Maswadah Hoax screen shot

The website has a second video, about the misleading media narrative surrounding an Israeli driving into a Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem, The 2010 E. Jerusalem Ambush-Hoax:
On October 8, 2010 major elements of the Western and Arabic “news” media engaged in a campaign to elicit sympathy for a two pre-teen Palestinian boys, whom they claimed were “run down” by a Jew in E. Jerusalem. The situation was greatly aggravated by dramatic photos and selectively-edited videos, which, on first glance, seemed to support this incendiary allegation. In reality, these children – along with a gaggle of international “news” photographers – waited at the bottom of a hill for Jewish cars to roll past, at which point the children hurled rocks at it, and actually charged the car as it attempted to swerve to avoid hitting them.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2013 40 Comments
who collectively have done more damage to Obamacare the brand than Republicans in Congress could have dreamed. The problems, according to the NY Times, are deep, deeeep, deeeeeeep, Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site:

NYTimes - Contractors seek weeks of work

Federal contractors have identified most of the main problems crippling President Obama’s online health insurance marketplace, but the administration has been slow to issue orders for fixing those flaws, and some contractors worry that the system may be weeks away from operating smoothly, people close to the project say.... Some specialists working on the project said the online system required such extensive repairs that it might not operate smoothly until after the Dec. 15 deadline for people to sign up for coverage starting in January, although that view is not universally shared.

In interviews, experts said the technological problems of the site went far beyond the roadblocks to creating accounts that continue to prevent legions of users from even registering. Indeed, several said, the login problems, though vexing to consumers, may be the easiest to solve. One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.

You know what we need according to Michael Scherer of Time? For Obama to get Mad:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2013 49 Comments

Legal Insurrection Version 1.0 was the old Blogger template. Version 2.0 was the custom designed Wordpress template initiated in June 2011. This Version 2.1 is a redesign of the home page to accomplish the following: 1. Featured Posts. Adding the ability to keep featured posts on the home...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 20, 2013 13 Comments

Been away all week at a conference in Orlando. Thanks to Mandy and other contributors for covering. Remember, there may be a partial shutdown of LI on Monday morning, for "maintenance." What did I miss? Update: The Washington Warrens! ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 20, 2013 12 Comments

Remember all those "Baby on Board" yellow signs back in the day? From J: the bumper sticker we've been waiting for, re this ridiculous trend. Spotted in Charlottesville.  ...

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