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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 September 20, 2013 8 Comments
Yesterday we posted examples of the racist and other posters placed around the Oberlin campus last February as part of The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013.  There are many more in the Oberlin police department document production we did not post. On no campus in the United States or elsewhere would the racist posters using the "N" word and so on be acceptable public discourse (even if it is an interesting free speech legal issue). But what about the anti-Israel poster? Oberlin Poster Anti-Israel w out handwriting Unfortunately, such discourse on campuses and elsewhere is par for the course in the anti-Israel movement.  The attempt to single out Israel alone for boycott, and the false equation of Israel with Apartheid, fascism and Nazism, is part of the dialogue and accepted.  Oberlin is one of only a handful of higher education campuses where the student government has endorsed the anti-Israel BDS movement and boycott.  https://twitter.com/SJPNational/status/331473633899864064 In fact, Oberlin has one of the most active anti-Israel movements which spreads historically inaccurate falsehoods about the "occupation" and Israeli "Apartheid" policies: I have to wonder, if only the anti-Israel posters were put up around Oberlin not accompanied by attacks on blacks, Muslims and gays, would anyone have noticed or cared?  Would the campus have erupted in protest? Somehow I doubt it. The specific flag used on the Oberlin poster is akin to a stock image in anti-Israel protests, this one in San Francisco:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 20, 2013 30 Comments
Two videos have been released by Generation Operation as part of a national campus push to convince young people not to sign up for Obamacare. If young people don't sign up, Obamacare become even more unsustainable, because the voodoo-economics behind it depend on the system sucking money out of the young to subsidize the less-young. First, for the ladies: Gentlemen, you're up next -- LEAN FORWARD! This was trolling extraordinaire.  What really inflames the left about these videos is that the group receives funding from a group to which the Koch brothers contribute.  That's enough of a connection to make these videos like flames to moths. The reaction has been severe hyperventilation, and attempts to dismiss it all as nonsense.  Those reactions are trying too hard. In the world of low information voters, these types of video approaches are just what the doctor ordered.  It's the imagery that matters. Here are some of the creepiest reactions:

1. Gawker

So obsessed with the Koch brothers, they even included a gif of David Koch in the same position as Uncle Sam: Creepy Obamacare Ad - Gawker1 Gawker Koch Creepy Obamacare

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 19, 2013 33 Comments

Maybe he should ask Raymond J. Donovan. Until then, all he has is publicity about the overturning of his politically-driven conviction, Tom DeLay money laundering verdict overturned: A Texas Court of Appeals in Austin has overturned the conviction of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, attorney...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 19, 2013 11 Comments

Updated post: Oberlin College blames the blogosphere ---------------------------- The Oberlin College racism hoax of 2013 involved, among other things, a liberal pro-Obama "anti-racist" student activist who decided to "troll" the campus to get a reaction by posting racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and homophobic signs and messages. It worked, as...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 16 Comments

A song from John Elefante formerly of the group Kansas. Ed Morrissey writes: If you’re not choking up by the end of this video — when John and Sami explain the meaning of this video — check your pulse. Yup. It's not often we hear pro-life songs coming from...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 8 Comments

I think the Brazilian President is not so much upset that we spy, but that we spy better than her spies spy....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 6 Comments
With a news cylce measured in seconds and minutes, not even hours, there are plenty of mainstream media mistakes, as I wrote yesterday, One lesson for mass killings: Don’t trust media reports for at least 24 hours. Piers Morgan, for example, ran wild over the fact that the shooter used an AR-15, except it turned out the shooter didn't. So Morgan deleted some of his inaccurate and embarrassing tweets about the use of an AR-15 in the Navy Yard shooting.  In so doing, Morgan both deleted inaccurate information and his own political embarrassment. That makes it harder for people (like me) to address Morgan's politics on gun control -- evidence has been removed from the internet. Well, fortunately, Twitchy grabbed the screen shots before Morgan's deletion: Twitchy Morgan AR-15 deleted tweets But in many cases, someone's Twitter or blog history is important in itself. With a blog entry, one can update and correct, as Buzzfeed did yesterday, and Google Cache often (but not always) saves the original.  But with Twitter, there is no ability to change the tweet itself, only to issue a new tweet correcting the prior (Morgan has not done that, btw), and it is much harder to reconstruct deleted tweets. The same issue exists as to the NY Daily News' now infamous Cover which was sent out on Twitter, and resulted in this conversation: https://twitter.com/brithume/status/380086436835241984 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/380312186456793088

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 26 Comments
A friend and LI reader, who has to remain anonymous because of his job, sent me an email last night about Marty Bodrog, who was killed in the Navy Yard shooting:
My USNA '81 classmate Marty Bodrog was killed yesterday by the douchebag at the Navy Yard. Here's the thing. The very first week of training at the Naval Academy in July 1977 during "plebe summer" we woke up at about 0600 and the second thing we did (after PT) was to go across the Severn River on boats to the Annapolis Naval Station to the shooting range, where we were all (1000 or so of us) trained by enlisted (many Vietnam veteran) Marines in how to shoot a Navy 45 caliber pistol. By the end of the week I shot expert and was awarded the Navy Expert Pistol Medal. Not everyone did that, but we were all exceptionally well trained. I have no doubt that if Marty was armed he would be alive and that douchebag would be dead. It is such a tragedy. Just thought I'd share, since no one will ever bring up anything like this.
Video report on Marty Bodrog:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 7 Comments

That's what this Prius driver is. From Randy: A couple of bumper stickers for you, spotted near Charlotte, NC. ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 17, 2013 33 Comments

It happens in just about every mass shooting or terrorist event.  The initial media reports are inaccurate, yet those hurried inaccuracies feed a political narrative that is hard to break even after the facts are "corrected." In the Newtown shooting, the wrong person was identified as...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 17, 2013 10 Comments
Today is the 2nd Anniversary of the start of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Our first post was a couple of weeks later, Declaration of the Occupation of Perpetual Grievance. Remember, the next, ahem, leading Democratic contender for President of the United States was the intellectual founder of Occupy Wall Street. Our Occupy Wall Street tag now has over 100 posts.  Go ahead and take a stroll down memory lane. It's really hard to find a single favorite post.  Here are the Awards for Best Occupy Wall Street Moments (plus a Special Award at the end):

5. #OccupyWallStreet Photo of the Day

Occupy Wall Street - Mark Lyon - 10-1-2011

4. Worst. #OccupyWallStreet. Advice. Ever.

Twitter - @allisonburtch - Give a shit

3. Best #OccupyWallStreet Tweet Ever

Twitter - @Cnn - bongo
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