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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 07, 2009 12 Comments

Posted April 8, 2009 Newsweek magazine's cover proclaims The Decline and Fall of Christian America, while the article inside the cover proclaims The End of Christian America. The substance of the article doesn't really prove the headline, but the goal of whichever editor wrote the headline...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2009 3 Comments

The Obama "bowing" incident is taking on a life of its own. Even those who defend Obama without question are acknowledging "the fact that Obama briefly bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia." No more denial that the event took place, only over its meaning.What...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2009 11 Comments

Barack Obama is on his apology tour of Europe. There is hardly anyone to whom he hasn't apologized for American arrogance and mistakes. One thing Obama hasn't managed to do is ask the Europeans to apologize to us for:Two World Wars which resulted in the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2009 8 Comments

President Barack Obama bowed down on bended knee when meeting the King of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 Summit recently. The incident is on video and was widely reported except in the U.S. mainstream media. The White House spin machine has been eerily silent on...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 04, 2009 1 Comment

George Bisharat is a law professor at the University of California*, Hastings College of Law. His is the son of a Palestinian father who immigrated to the U.S. several years before the creation of Israel, and an American mother. I first learned of George Bisharat when...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 04, 2009 1 Comment

The left-wing group Think Progress is complaining of Conservatives Holding Up Increasing Number Of Key Obama Nominees. According to the post:Conservatives in Congress and in the media are attempting to block or delay a growing number of critical nominees for what amount to ideological witch...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 04, 2009 3 Comments

A bill pending in Congress, The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, sponsored by John Rockefeller (D) and Olympia Snowe (R) attempts to deal with very real threats to the nation's cyber-infrastructure. Attacks on military, government and civilian cyber-infrastructure are all too real, and it is time...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 02, 2009 1 Comment

As predicted on this Blog several months ago, the indictment of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been handed down, and it includes a sweeping RICO charge alleging that Blagojevich and others conducted a criminal enterprise, which the indictment calls the Blagojevich Enterprise. That enterprise...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 02, 2009 6 Comments

Controversy is swirling around the appointment of Yale Law School Professor and Dean Harold Koh to the position of State Department Legal Advisor, essentially the top lawyer at State. Koh is being portrayed as willing to apply Sharia law in some circumstances, as is happening...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2009 6 Comments

Gateway Pundit, Hot Air, Jammie Wearing Fool, and others are reporting that the Obamas gave the Queen of England an iPod as a present. Putting aside the tacky nature of such a gift in this context, one point that has been overlooked is that iPods...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2009 1 Comment

Update 4-28-2009: Murphy declared the winner of the race by a couple hundred votes, as a result of doing better on absentee ballots than expected.----------------------------------------------------The Politico is characterizing the virtual tie between Jim Tedesco (R) and Scott Murphy (D) as a loss for Republicans....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2009 0 Comments

My favorite April Fools' day headlines from around the globe:Obama confesses to treason and resigns, co-conspirators are in custody, Hillary Clinton sworn in as presidentTwitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of inkMicrosoft releases Vista patch to improve battery lifeDog poo biofuel to power...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2009 5 Comments

News is just breaking that Attorney General Eric Holder is withdrawing the indictment of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens based on severe prosecutorial misconduct. The Politico reports, via NPR, that Holder will instruct deputies to withdraw the indictment against the Alaska Republican today, effectively voiding...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 31, 2009 0 Comments

"J Street" is a new web-based group which promises to promote "peace" in the Middle East. J Street has garnered much attention, and a Memeorandum thread, based on an article in Jewish Week which asks "What is [it] about J Street, the pro-peace process lobby...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 30, 2009 0 Comments

Ann Althouse is marrying one of the commenters on her blog. But she vehemently denies that her blog serves as one big dating service, not that there would be anything wrong with that.So what does the Blogospheric Neologian call this?Blogcest--------------------------------------------Follow me on Twitter and Facebook...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 30, 2009 4 Comments

Andrew Breitbart's post, Online activists on the right, unite!, has called attention to a problem almost every conservative blogger experiences: Trolls who plant inflammatory comments to make the blog appear racist or sexist or some other "ist" or who post such long comments that they...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 29, 2009 1 Comment

The difficulties facing The New York Times are well documented. Falling circulation, revenues and credibility; rising costs, incredulity, and debt. But it looks like the Times has hit upon a strategy for survival: DEATH.The death strategy has not been announced, but is evident on the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 29, 2009 1 Comment

During the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama attempted to prove intentions to keep us safe by insisting that he, unlike the Bush administration, would send troops into Pakistan without Pakistani approval:In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen....

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