Emeritus Faculty Spotlight: Professor Robert Bohrer

For over 40 years, the California Western School of Law community has been the beneficiary of Professor Robert Bohrer’s insatiable curiosity and dedication to his students and colleagues—not to mention his easy Midwestern smile and old school Chicago charm. As he transitions to emeritus status this June, we offer our heartfelt appreciation for all that Professor Bohrer has given to CWSL and wish him the very best in his well-deserved years of retirement. Having just turned 75 and looking back on a career in which, among much else, he published two books and scores of articles, helped shape U.S. biotechnology and pharmaceutical policy, and nurtured multiple generations of lawyers and advocates, Professor Bohrer comments simply, “It has been an extraordinary privilege to be able to do what I love to do for as long as I have, and I will miss it.” 

If there is one quality that might account for Professor Bohrer’s accomplished career it would likely be his broad and bottomless curiosity. Hailing from Chicago, and the first in his family to attend a four-year university, Bob Bohrer started out at Haverford College, “having no idea” what he wanted to do but became enamored of academic life—studying biology, then philosophy, and ending up as a psychology major. At the beginning of his senior year of college when a friend asked if he was going to take the LSATs, he said he hadn’t really given it any thought and asked, “When are they?” The friend replied, “October at Villanova,” (seven miles down the road from Haverford). Bob asked his friend, “Are you driving?” When his friend said yes, Bob signed up. Professor Bohrer notes that he has always been good at standardized tests, but “I wouldn’t consider that among my virtues.” Suffice it to say that when his scores came back he applied to the University of Illinois College of Law downstate in Champaign-Urbana, got in, and, since tuition was only $300 a semester in 1971, he decided to give it a try.

How many future colleagues and students can feel grateful that when Professor Bohrer got to law school to “give it a try” he was, as he says, “stunned by how interesting it was. I hadn’t expected it, but the law was endlessly fascinating. And I looked at my law professors and thought, ‘What a great job.’ And that set me on the path I’ve been on for 53 years.”

Professor Bohrer looks back with particular fondness on his time at the University of Illinois Law Review, where he was able to gain “invaluable training in research, writing, and thinking,” and to connect his interests in psychology and law, writing a paper on the use of IQ testing in public schools and its relationship to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Professor Bohrer also notes—with a wink to current students considering joining the Law Review—that the experience was “extraordinarily beneficial” and made him “attractive to large law firms.”

When sign-up sheets began popping up on the corkboard outside the Career Services office, Professor Bohrer’s curiosity was captured again: “What’s going on?” he asked. “The big firms are coming down from Chicago to interview,” was the reply from fellow students. “And they pay a lot.” When they told him how much, Bob was again signing up, giving it a try. That summer, he began as a summer associate at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd. The partners offered him a job at the beginning of his third year, which Bob accepted because “they seemed like the people I would enjoy being with the most—extraordinarily nice.”

This would not be the last time that a gut instinct for being around good people would serve Bob well. Professor Bohrer comments further that when he joined Bell, Boyd & Lloyd in 1974, before law firms were ranked based on profits per partner, it was “a very different era in the American legal profession—but even then the Bell, Boyd & Lloyd partners were an outlier in how kind they were.” They also, of course, did “incredibly interesting work,” offering Bob the opportunity to work in antitrust and securities litigation and later in real estate, allowing him to do what he does best—“figure out solutions to problems for which the solutions aren’t obvious.”

After several years, however, the desire for more constant intellectual stimulation pushed Bob to ask for a leave of absence from the firm to attend a new Master of Laws (LL.M.) program at Harvard Law School for students looking to become law professors. Once back within the walls of the academy, Professor Bohrer admits he felt like he “was being set loose in an intellectual candy store.” In just his first semester, he took Comparative Law of Japan, Medieval European Legal History, Neo-Marxist Legal History from 1860 to 1960, and Jurisprudence with Charles Fried, who later served as Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration. Bob also found himself making a bit of history when the paper that he produced at Harvard on the boundaries and appropriate uses of affirmative action was quoted by Sandra Day O’Connor in her Supreme Court opinion in City of Richmond v. Croson (1989). He had begun work on the topic at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd when they were representing the National Merit Scholarship Foundation and then decided to turn it into his master’s thesis at Harvard.

With his trademark smile, Professor Bohrer notes that Justice O’Connor later reversed her approach to the issue, ending his brief chance to have an “enduring influence on the course of American constitutional law.” But for Professor Bohrer what was most enduring about that paper was that when he dropped a copy off at Dean Albert Sacks’ office, he received a call a week later saying that the Dean would like to see him about it. When Bob showed up—“a relative nobody” in his own eyes—the Dean of Harvard Law School sat with him and went through his paper page by page, giving him comments. “That was one of the hallmarks of being a great Dean and a great person—that he would take that time with me,” says Professor Bohrer, who was just then setting out on a career of providing that same kind of nurturing to his students for over four decades.

“At California Western, we don't just say we're student-focused,” says Professor Bohrer. “We are student-focused. I have students from my very first years of teaching that I am still in touch with and still feel close to, and that has continued to be a priority for us.” If there is anyone who would know what has remained constant at CWSL, it is Professor Bohrer, who joined the faculty in 1982 because—no surprise here—“I really liked the people. I was attracted to the energy of the place.” Enamored with the diversity of the student body, the ambitiousness of the faculty, and the “paradise” of San Diego, Bob began his California Western tenure, where he has now spent more than half of his life. In that time, he has continually evolved as a teacher, but says that he has always wanted to emphasize “the necessity for students to find a new way of looking at what is in front of them. People talk about making both sides of an argument. That’s fine. But is there, in fact, a completely different way to look at the problem?” Professor Bohrer says that he has always found it most rewarding to be able to mentor his students in this way. And it is unsurprising that in his own scholarship and in his long career as a board member and consultant for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and related not-for-profit organizations, Professor Bohrer has been challenging himself to find answers to the difficult questions that arise at the intersection of law and science. He began his career as a scholar by focusing on the important role that agencies and courts play in assessing and managing risk and ultimately focusing on the intersection of molecular biology and law in the context of pharmaceutical policy.

Professor Bohrer readily admits that helping to define the fields of biotechnology law and pharmaceutical policy “is probably the most important thing that I’ve done.” In 1984, he and the late Clifford Grobstein, a developmental biologist and the former Dean of the School of Medicine at UCSD, set out to create an interdisciplinary conference that could address the legal, scientific, and financial intersections of the burgeoning field of biotechnology. Everything from genetically modified organisms and gene therapies to venture capital was discussed—and forecast—at the conference, mapping out the legal and regulatory environment that would either support or stifle the development of biotech and pharmaceuticals. “We were the only show in the country that had taken this broader multidisciplinary approach to talking about issues in biotech,” says Professor Bohrer, who later expanded the conference into monthly meetings that would pair experts for sharing knowledge across industry and academia.

His continued fascination with these intersections has driven Professor Bohrer’s prolific scholarship, on everything from healthcare patents to gene therapy and to pharmaceutical marketing. In other words, Professor Bohrer has sought to answer and shape how law impacts the development of treatments that prevent diseases and save lives. In addition to a deep catalogue of articles and essays on these topics, Professor Bohrer has also published two books: Research to Revolution: Scientific, Business, and Legal Perspectives on the New Biotechnology (1987) and A Guide to Biotechnology Law and Business (2007), which was the first single-authored treatise on biotech law.

Professor Bohrer has also parlayed his expertise into prominent leadership positions, locally and nationally, in public and private service. For ten years he served on the board of the La Jolla Institute for Molecular Medicine; for seven years he was the Director of Biotechnology Programs at the UCSD Center for Molecular Genetics; and, he continues to be a member of the Rees Stealy Research Foundation Board. He has also consulted with companies developing cancer antibodies, drugs for neurodegenerative diseases, proteomics platforms, drug discovery technology, and genetic diagnostic technology. He notes that his goal in these roles has been to steer drug development so that “we get much more benefit out of all that we’re spending” and so that the development process is steered by science. Here Professor Bohrer harkens back to his early college days as a biology major saying that “if you’re going to develop a drug, you ought to understand the mechanism of the disease.” Whether it is the immune response that triggers Multiple Sclerosis or the gene mutation that causes Stargardt disease, Professor Bohrer has wrestled with the scientific literature and sought a deep understanding of biomedical science so that he could help responsibly shape pharmaceutical policy, ultimately seeking to reduce waste and inefficiency in a “badly designed and fractured healthcare system.”

You might think that after four decades in this field, Professor Bohrer might have tired, but he says, “I'm still reading scientific literature as though my life depended on it. And because it is just so interesting.” Professor Bohrer’s excited curiosity has now turned to the subjects of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and further advancements in molecular biology that he expects will create “revolutionary changes in human healthcare in the next two decades.” And his productive pen doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon, as he plans this year to finish an article on how AI in molecular biology will challenge patent doctrine and another on the rise of biosimilar drugs. He also hopes to write a book on pharmaceutical policy and is considering updating his 2007 Guide to Biotechnology Law and Business. It may come as no surprise that Professor Bohrer says he chose to retire now because he feels confident that he is still good at the job.

Looking forward, Professor Bohrer is also confident about California Western: “My younger colleagues are just extraordinary. And when I say ‘younger colleagues,’ that’s everybody.” He is particularly proud of the fact that the faculty has a “unified vision” of “what legal education is supposed to be and what we want the Law School to be,” all under the careful and ambitious guidance of Dean Sean Scott, during whose tenure he sees much progress for the school. Professor Bohrer is heartened by the fact that there is “consensus among the faculty that we want more respect for the school.” He notes that his colleagues are eagerly charging forward—in their research, at conferences, in public appearances—in seeking to continue to elevate the reputation of the school to the level that it truly deserves. Professor Bohrer says without a doubt, “Our students are just as brilliant and capable as anyone, and they deserve the chance to get their foot in the door and be recognized.” 

With his retirement starting this summer, Professor Bohrer’s curiosity and kindness continue to guide him. He intends to relax and travel, but also intends to put his emeritus faculty office space to good use, finishing his article on AI and continuing to consult with colleagues and to mentor and stay in touch with alumni. And when he isn’t walking the campus that he has helped define, Professor Bohrer says he also wants to sign up to be a cuddler in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or a volunteer reader at a public library, sharing his warmth with yet another generation. Whatever it is, he knows it will certainly be endlessly fascinating.

The California Western community wishes to extend our deepest gratitude and a hearty congratulations to Professor Robert Bohrer for his decades of service to the school, its faculty, staff, and students. He has left an indelible mark on the institution's legacy, and he is an inspiration for its future.