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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.

Whenever it is a slow news day, or some event (like the Obama inauguration) is sucking the air out of the media and internet, someone whose blog I follow invariably posts a picture of a pretty woman under some pretext. When the picture pops up...

The media is all aflutter today with reports -- as headlined in the NY Times -- that "all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically...

I recently received a renewal invoice for The Providence Journal, in the amount of $259 annually. The national and international coverage in the ProJo simply regurgitates wire service stories, but the local and state coverage is superb. ProJo investigative reporters have uncovered numerous government scandals,...

I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of Illinois politics. I've been following the Rod Blagojevich saga as an outsider looking in, from a legal perspective. One things seems clear to me, as we approach the impeachment trial: Rod Blagojevich is very good...

The image on the home page of The New York Times website is startling. A bombed out building in Gaza with a single brightly colored child's shoe in the middle of the photo. The imagery is powerful, particularly the contrast between the blackened floor and...

The Obama bed has made its way from a fancy antique shop in Seekonk, Massachusetts, to the White House. The 200-year-old antique tall-post tiger maple bed was resized to king for the Obamas. The bed comes from Leonards antiques, which did not reveal the price....

Paul Krugman is the NY Times columnist who won the Nobel prize for economics work he did over a decade ago before he became a columnist. Khalid Mashal is the political leader of Hamas based in Syria, who attained his position based on terrorist work...

It is always a little dangerous when law professors opine on areas of law with which they have little familiarity. That is why I have stayed away from the issue of whether Israel must use "proportionate" force against Hamas. Although I suspected that the term...

Watching live television coverage of the US Airways crash in the Hudson River today, I'm reminded of Air Florida Flight 90, which crashed into the Potomac River on January 13, 1982. The Air Florida plane hit the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., killing 78...

Professor Stephen Baindridge, of "Professor Baindridge" fame, is simplifying and scaling back his blog as a result of "suffering for a while now from a severe case of blogging burnout." When one of the "giants" of blogging needs a break, one has to wonder if...

Remember Barack Obama's famous attack on John McCain, that McCain wasn't willing to go to the cave where Osama bin Laden was hiding: "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to...

As we get closer to Barack Obama taking office, the cry for "war crimes" trials of Bush administration lawyers who expressed legal opinions regarding coerced interrogation grows louder.I have yet to hear anyone call for a war crimes trial for the attorneys during the Clinton...

Has anybody actually seen the paperwork Roland Burris submitted to the Secretary of the Senate which caused Harry Reid and Dick Durbin to approve seating Burris?In her January 12, 2009 Press Release, the Secretary of the Senate stated that "Mr. Burris's certificate, and accompanying documentation,...

OK, latest hot button issue. The government of Iran discriminates against women when it comes to stoning as punishment for adultery. Women are buried up to their neck, while men are buried only up to the waist. If you can escape the stoning, you are...

Barack Obama is about to propose a massive, trillion dollar stimulus package, the centerpiece of which is infrastructure projects. Large-scale infrastructure projects have a long history of cost-overruns, mob-influence through corrupt unions, and are not effective at long-term job creation.But that is not the worst...

It has just been announced that Senate lawyers have agreed that Roland Burris' paperwork is in order, and he should be seated. If you followed the commentary on my post The Burris-Murkowski Double Standard, you would have seen this coming. There is no way that...