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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.

UPDATE: Alan Colmes e-mailed me to indicate he meant no offense, and said "C’mon Professor, we’re BOTH blowhards." Well, that may be going a bit too far, but thanks for the note. I take back what all those people said about him.----------------------------------------------------I am...

It would be very easy to fall into a depression over Arlen Specter switching political parties, giving Democrats a likely filibuster-proof Senate majority. The result will be that Obama will be able to push through much of his agenda without meaningful debate.Not that I will...

Reports indicate that the deal the United Auto Workers has struck with Chrysler will include majority Union ownership of the company, and a seat on the Board. This is the single best news the American auto industry has heard in decades.I have been a harsh...

In what should go down in internet history as one of the most embarrassingly misleading posts, John Nichols of The Nation authored an article titled "GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness." The joke was on Nichols, because Nichols and the nutroots bloggers who ran with his...

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo was shouted down and bullied off the stage a couple of weeks ago at the University of North Carolina by protesters opposed to Tancredo's stand on illegal immigration. Tancredo espouses the apparently radical view that we should enforce immigration laws; in...

The Nation has run a post, "GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness," which seeks to blame the opponents of the Stimulus Plan for lack of preparedness for the swine flu outbreak. The post, like most big lies, has a kernel of truth, but twists reality for...

Republicans are not Obama's worst policy enemies. At least Obama knows that Republicans do not support Obama's agenda. Democrats who are fixated on getting revenge on the Bush administration are Obama's real problem, and are handing Republicans a policy gift by pushing hard for a...

From The Telegraph via Powerline (emphasis mine):If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never...

Bill Roggio, who runs a great website, The Long War Journal, has been reporting for months on the steady increase in the power of the Pakistani Taliban, who are approaching the capital of Islamabad. What is most frightening is that the Taliban also are approaching...

Britain has solved the problem of burning coal without emitting "greenhouse gases." According to The Independent, cutting edge technology called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) will be fitted on every new coal burning power plant: CCS, which takes power stations' carbon dioxide waste gas, liquefies...

Ezra Klein got a promotion. He's moving from The American Prospect to The Washington Post. He is receiving Obama-like kudos:This is a great move by the Post, and a risk. Ezra is among the cream of the crop of the new phase of journalism --...

By trickling out bits and pieces of top secret memoranda regarding interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorists, Barack Obama thought he would have the best of all worlds. Obama believed that exposing the dark side of the war on terror would ingratiate us with the world. At...

Whether waterboarding should have been used on 9/11 mastermind Kalhid Sheikh Mohammed and two other top al-Qaeda operatives is a legitimate issue. Jay Bybee and others gave legal opinions with which many people disagree, but I have yet to see anyone present a convincing argument...

I don't think Jay Bybee (or Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo or Stephen Bradbury) are criminals. At worst, they expressed legal opinions on interrogation of terrorism suspects which a court may someday declare to be wrong. Bybee's being wrong, if indeed he was, contributed to...

The debate over interrogation of the three top-level al-Qaeda leaders who were subjected to waterboarding is entering the honest phase. The first phase was the "this is the worst thing that has happened in the history of the earth" handwringing on the left. The second...

Matthew Yglesias on the new tape released by Ayman al-Zawahri telling Muslims not to be fooled by Obama:Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to the relatively small group of people known as al-Qaeda was the rise to power of George W. Bush, whose brutality,...