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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 April 23, 2009 3 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 1 Comment

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 --...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2009 6 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 22, 2009 1 Comment

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2009 3 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 13 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 10 Comments

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,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 3 Comments

CQ Politics reports, based on an anonymous source, that California Democratic Representative Jane Harman "was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2009 22 Comments

The Financial Times reports that banks and other financial institutions which received TARP funds may not be allowed to repay the loans. Yes, that is correct:Strong banks will be allowed to repay bail-out funds they received from the US government but only if such a...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 19, 2009 3 Comments

Call me a paranoid wingnut, if you must, but look at this from CNNPolitics.com today:--------------------------------------------Follow me on Twitter and Facebook...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 19, 2009 9 Comments

Bloomberg news reports the following statement by Barack Obama in his speech at the Summit of the Americas, after Daniel Ortega had spent an hour ripping into the U.S. (emphasis mine):“You can’t blame the U.S. for every problem in this hemisphere,” Obama said. “I am...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2009 12 Comments

Andrew Sullivan complained that as of 7:27 p.m. on April 16, 2009 (approximately three hours after the interrogation memos were released by DOJ), none of DrudgeReport, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin or Pajamas Media had a post on the topic:No mention of the torture memos appears right...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2009 2 Comments

Obama's warm embrace of Hugo Chavez was worse than his bowing down to the King of Saudi Arabia. In the case of Saudi Arabia, there is no apparent movement for freedom, so all Obama threw under the bus was our country's dignity. As to Chavez,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2009 12 Comments

I long have criticized the bias of the NY Times, and mocked its business death spiral. My posts Nude Swiss Hikers Rescue NY Times and NY Times New Business Strategy: DEATH mocked the sensationalist trend on The Times' website. I was the first (as far...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2009 25 Comments

The Obama administration released today four memoranda detailing the legal analysis regarding interrogation techniques, most notably involving Abu Zubaydah. There is a lot of outrage regarding the interrogation techniques approved, but those are mostly non-legal issues. Some of the techniques approved, such as grabbing the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2009 2 Comments

I attended the Tea Party in Corning, NY, yesterday. There was a good crowd in this relatively small town in western upstate NY (several hours from NY City), several hundred in total. Corning is home to Corning glass and Steuben glass. The entire region has...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2009 13 Comments

Texas Governor Rick Perry said that he doesn't think Texas should secede from the U.S. Here is Perry's quote:We got a great Union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2009 40 Comments

Liberals love to quote Sinclair Lewis' line that "when fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross." Lewis was wrong. We have had the flag and Christianity for over 200 years, but we have not had fascism.To the...

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