Professor Jacobs has been a Professor at McGeorge since 1993. During this time, she has authored a substantial and important body of scholarship on constitutional doctrine, governance and national security, and particularly on government speech. Professor Jacobs' articles have appeared in law journals at Yale, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio State, UC Davis, Rutgers, Tulane, Florida and Indiana. Her separate pieces of scholarship on bioterrorism and national security have appeared as invited submissions to Homeland Security: Law and Policy (William Nicholson, ed. 2005), Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense (J. Wiley, 2005), the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, and the interdisciplinary journal, Biosecurity & Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice & Science. Professor Jacobs is co-author of law review pieces addressing law reform in Indonesia and two volumes in the McGeorge Global Issues series designed to bring international and comparative law into core law school classes, Global Issues in Constitutional Law and Global Issues in Freedom of Speech and Religion.

Currently, Professor Jacobs serves as Director of the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy, dedicated to studying issues of federalism and government structure and aiding government policymakers who must navigate their complexities. Before this appointment, Professor Jacobs served as Director of McGeorge's Institute for Development of Legal Infrastructure. Located within the McGeorge Center for Global Business and Development, the Institute generates scholarship on development issues and provides service to developing nations seeking to strengthen their legal systems. In February 2008, Professor Jacobs taught a course at Zhejiang Gongshang University in Hangzhou, China, as part of a USAID legal education grant administered by the Institute. Professor Jacobs has also led the McGeorge Bioterrorism and Public Health Initiative, which focused on introducing issues related to those topics into the law school curriculum. Professor Jacobs received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, and served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.