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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.

Democrats of Massachusetts, listen up. The special election is all but over. Martha Coakley has won.No need to show up to vote, since DownWithTyranny has pronounced that all polls showing the race tightening are worthless:Many of the pollsters and pundits predicting a Republican win in...

Obama wins New Hampshire primary in a landslide!That was the prediction of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and most other pollsters prior to the primary. In fact, Hillary Clinton won the primary, causing much hand wringing. This shows us that we need to...

This should motivate you. This sort of attitude has motivated me for years. From an erudite "reality-based" pundit at Blue Mass:Let's just be obvious about this: Scott Brown has absolutely no business being in the same area code as Martha Coakley. Not to...

This is a follow up to my earlier report on my day at Scott Brown's campaign headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts, in the western suburbs of Boston.My expectations were fairly low. I figured I'd stay an hour or so, talk to some people, get a better...

Also see my update to this post, Brown HQ Report #2---------------------------------------------This is a quick update on my day so far at Scott Brown headquarters. I'll give a more complete report later.Things are totally crazy here. The phones are ringing off the hooks. The phone bank...

Want to know how misinformed and bewildered the American feminist movement is on the state of the Democratic Party?Check out this post at HuffPo by blogger Amy Siskind, calling on Martha Coakley to change her position on backing the health care bill since the bill...

In case you have not heard, the Democrats have come up with a plan to nullify temporarily the Massachusetts voters in the Senate special election on January 19, if Scott Brown wins.As reported by the Boston Herald, interim Senator Paul Kirk is on record that...

I posted earlier today about negative push polling in Massachusetts against Scott Brown, including questions purporting to link Brown to "hate groups."The group making the calls possibly (and I stress possibly) was McGuire Research (see my prior post for details) which still has not returned...

In just the latest sign that the Coakley campaign is in trouble, MoveOn.Org has launched an urgent fundraising campaign on her behalf (bold in original):The Republicans are pulling out all the stops in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, because if they win,...

I posted some time ago about a study by an MIT health economist, Jonathan Gruber, on the supposed cost savings of the Senate health bill, Are Our Liberties Worth Only $200-$500?. Even to my non-mathematical mind, Gruber's analysis was shoddy: Gruber has based his projections...

See update to this post: Is SEIU Behind Anti-Brown Push Polling?------------------------------------------------I received this e-mail from a Massachusetts resident and businesswoman (and I verified her identity through publicly available sources), regarding a phone call she received last night:I got an odd call last night that presented...

No surprise here. When the Massachusetts legislature passed a law, at the request of a dying Ted Kennedy, to allow the Governor to appoint an interim successor, a key justification was that the interim appointee not only would not run for office but also would...

I previously posted that Martha Coakley's campaign appeared to be overstating its financial strength by hyping its primary fundraising numbers, almost all of which was spent during the primary. Coakley has not released her post-primary fundraising numbers.Coakley has been surprisingly quiet for someone who supposedly...

What is wrong with this picture: We have the most liberal Congress and President ever, who are pushing an equally liberal agenda, yet the country is more conservative than in recent history.Gallup has released its 1992-2009 survey of political self-identification, and the result is that...

A week ago I noted that Scott Brown was winning the online race. In the last week, particularly after the Rasmussen poll, Brown has run away with the online race.On Twitter, Brown is dominant. As of this morning, @ScottBrownMA has 3913 followers versus 1997 for...

I'm pleased that my post, Earthquake Rumblings in MA, is ranked the most influential U.S. Politics post at Technorati.The election on January 19 is more important than you can imagine, and it no longer is under the radar.Based on the Rasmussen poll, and Brown's online...

From CQ Politics blog:The Coakley campaign announced in a release that Kennedy's widow, Vicki, nephew Joe Kennedy, a former Massachusetts congressman, and great nephew Joe Kennedy III will endorse the Democratic nominee tomorrow in an event in Medford, Mass.Interim Senate appointee Paul Kirk, a close...

In my prior post, "What's Martha Afraid Of?", I predicted that Martha Coakley's duck and hide campaign strategy would begin to backfire, and would become the equivalent of the Ben & Jerry's "What's the doughboy afraid of?" campaign.Sure enough, Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory has...