Bob was a great academic, mentor, teacher, and builder of lasting institutions like the American Law and Economics Association.  His work on the economics of tort, contracts and property, intellectual property, public law, bargaining, and litigation was foundational.  It earned him the fifth Coase Medal from the American Law and Economics Association, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and countless awards.  Bob literally taught the world law and economics through his co-authored textbook, which has been translated into many languages.

Bob was a brilliant man of many accomplishments, but perhaps his greatest accomplishment was what a blessing he was to all who knew him.  Neither Bob's kindness nor his devilish sense of humor will be soon forgotten.  Bob was always curious, lively, and telling some wonderful story or joke. He was always on the move: running, playing soccer, swimming, walking. For many of his colleagues, movement was the best time to engage in deep conversation about ideas, family, music, history, and the meaning of life.

Bob is survived by the love of his life, his wife, Blair, his children, John, Elizabeth ("Bo") and Joe (a Berkeley Law alum), their spouses, Michelle Cooter, Rodrigo Calderon, and Arielle Fleisher, respectively, and grandchildren Nathaniel and Ian Cooter, and Cordelia and Beatrice Flooter.  As much as Bob loved his friends, he adored his family even more, and the last years of his life were filled with joy at watching his grandchildren grow.

Many of my most powerful memories of Bob are from these runs, each one leaving me with a Bobism, sometimes in thought, sometimes in action. Thought: utilitarianism for families, Rawlsianism for states. Despite his fondness for free markets, Bob remained committed to justice and fairness. Action: once, while running, Bob ducked down and picked up a nail in the road, saying he didn't want a car to get stuck. Somehow this had never occurred to me, that one might even so casually render a public service, and I have always done it since, thinking of Bob each time.

I'll add another Bob-ism that I think of frequently. At one point, while running, he told me had had just had his first colonoscopy (I think he was about 54 at the time). He said that it had been hard to get an appointment: "I called the drs office and they said the next appointment was many months off. I said, 'I need something right away! I've been putting this off for four years!'" I think many of us can recognize ourselves in that . . .

Bob switched to swimming a while ago, and I missed our running conversations, many of which happened when I was most in need of his thoughts and advice on becoming a young father myself, as well as an academic with eclectic interests. But we continued to meet and talk, and occasionally to teach together. I know that the last years were so hard for him, as his health kept him from doing the work he wanted to, but for his friends, even these hard years were a blessing -- and I know even more so for his beloved family. Farewell, my friend.

Chris Kutz

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When someone dies, jews say, "May his memory be a blessing."

As to Robert Danbridge Cooter, I have never been more certain of a person that his memory will be a blessing, not just for his family and closest friends, but for pretty much everyone he touched.  Certainly his memory will always be a blessing for me.    

Bob was a brilliant man of enormous accomplishments. He wrote seminal articles on torts, contracts, property, and even unlikely fields like constitutional law.    For this, Bob won the Coase medal the top law and economics prize.    Bob was also a teacher; he co-authored a book that taught hundreds of thousands around the world and inspired countless careers in law and economics.  Bob was an institution builder.  He cofounded both the American Law and Economics Association and the Latin American and Caribbean Law and Econ Association. He also co-founded bepress, a company that created scores of academic journals as well as Digital Commons, a publishing platform that many of you use every week without knowing it.  Any of these accomplishments by themselves would make most of us burst with pride.

But to me none of these were Bob's greatest accomplishment.  Bob Cooter's greatest accomplishment was the blessing he was to anyone who knew him.  These worldly accomplishments were not what made his former soccer team mates from 30 years ago, come every friday to Bob and Blair's for brunch.  Nor was it what made former students fly across the country or even from Brazil to be here today for this service. This is all because of who Bob was as a person, and that was the most amazing thing about Bob.

 Bob had a warm smile and often mischievous glint in his eye, a glorious laugh and a terrific sense of humor.  He always had a story told with his Virginian sensibilities.  He made people feel at ease.  He wanted not just to meet everyone but to know them.

I was incredibly fortunate to be Bob's friend for 32 years.  We were colleagues; we played soccer and ran together; we were coauthors; and for nearly two decades we were business partners joined at the hip. Bob's wisdom, kindness and joy enriched my life immeasurably as it did for so many others.

 Year after year Bob invited a mixture of the old guard and the young scholars to give the law-econ seminar, and at seminar dinners Bob drew everyone out especially young scholars.

One of Bob's most endearing traits was the way he asked everyone questions.  They seemed simple, sometimes even naive, but were frequently deep.  And he kept asking even when it seemed there was nothing left to learn.  Bob believed that you can learn from pretty much anyone if you are curious enough and don't give up until you have learned something. 

Bob's questions were not always for his own learning, though.   When my boys were little, every time Bob came over he would smile and say:  "I forgot again.  Do you shake hands this way (waving hands horizontally), or do you shake hands this way (shaking normally).   Which way is right?"  This corny joke never got old and my boys squealed in delight at his professed ignorance every time.

Bob was a generous man.  On thanksgiving, he would walk around town with a wad of 50 dollar bills and give them out to homeless people.  But Bob's generosity was not so much the money he gave away but like with his friends it was his time and kind attention.  Bob started a conversation with each person as he handed them $50.  Bob thought it dehumanizing that so many people won't talk to homeless people and won't even look them in the eye when giving them money. Bob, as psychologist and philosopher, knew that every person needs and deserves our regard.  Of course, as an economist Bob also knew that they could use the fifty bucks. 

As this story suggests, Bob was an original. He always had his laptop open during seminars.  That was not original.  What was original was that he was not handling his email like everyone else.  Bob was taking notes on his computer about the paper. 

His laptop was also open during faculty meetings.  There, though, Bob was handling his email.  Sorry Erwin.

Bob' originality extended beyond seminars.  He was the only law faculty I recall riding a motorcycle to school.  Bob went to remote areas of Papua New Guinea to study customary land law. He studied the role of custom in Native American courts.  And he travelled to the deep reaches of the Amazon.  Bob wrote about law as philosopher and anthropologist in addition to as an economist.    He was an adventurer across nations and across disciplines.

The variety of Bob's life and his wide circle of friends from soccer buddies, to Oxford philosophers, from Mexican political operatives to billionaires revealed Bob's incredible spirit and joie de vivre. 

But at his core Bob was a family man.  Bob left every seminar dinner to call his mom.  Bob never ceased telling me stories of his wife and three children.  He often said how lucky he was to be married to Blair, whom he called a saint, and their love was clear whenever I saw them together.  He was enormously proud of his children and delighted in their families.  

To his last day Bob's mind and spirit were engaged. Despite years of health challenges every time we spoke, he did not complain, but was optimistic and would tell me he was getting a little better each day.  He told me he was blessed by his family and had lived a good life. On the day he died, he was exercising and writing a Homeric novel---a fitting project for a man who lived an epic life.

Bob's memory -- memories of his kindness and warmth, his optimism, his stories, and his curiosity will ever be an inspiration to me.  May his memory be a blessing for all of you as well.

Lucy Salyer, University of New Hampshire, JSP class of 1989

The year that three of us JSPers took his class (alongside law students and econ majors) he asked, after explaining an obscure graph, "To whom is this a profound mystery?" The three of us cried out: "Profound mystery! Right here!" And then Bob said, "Well, imagine there's a cow." And proceeded to make everything crystal clear through fun, vivid examples. It was a display of spectacular pedagogy for three reasons:

(1) Bob was so at home with the law and econ literature that he built the entire scenario to match Ronald Coase's theorem (he was a Coase medalist) and Robert Ellickson's Order Without Law.

(2) Bob's facility in calibrating his explanation to the precise level of the person asking the question, without ever humiliating or confusing, was truly masterful.

(3) Without making a big thing of it, Bob made us feel at home in a classroom that had lawyers, economists, and sociologist/political scientist types.

At the end of the semester, Bob invited us to his home and was such a gracious host. He was always marvelously well spoken, kind and courteous, and blessed with saintly patience and a gregarious sense of humor. I will never forget him.

--Hadar Aviram, JSP Class of 2005

Our close friendship began because it was impossible not to be close friends with Bob once you got to know him.

Our collaborations began because we thought alike on important matters.  As you may know, Bob started at Berkeley in the Department of Economics, not the Law School, but he began hanging out at law school events. The reason was that that Bob was interested not as much in numerical economics --- although everyone said he was excellent at that --- but in almost everything that economics or reason could explain in the real world; with emphasis on how people could be expected to behave in various contexts and under given incentives; and in that connection Bob was particularly interested in morality. These were interests that Bob and I shared.

Our collaborations fell into two phases. In the first phase we jointly taught Contracts for two years. I had no background in economics, and Bob had no background it law, so he was fond of saying that I taught him Contracts he taught me economics. I had no background in economics, except for reading one or two economic textbooks, and Bob had no background it law, so he was fond of saying that I taught him Contracts he taught me economics.

In this phase we also and co-authored two law review articles, Damages for Breach of Contracts and Fairness, Character, and Efficiency in Firms. I will focus on the second article. You can tell by the title of the Article, which includes fairness and character, that it was not a conventional law and economics article. I will read you a few passages from this article. Although we co-authored the article, and we shred the ideas in this passage, at a remove of 24 years I can’t remember who played a leading role in writing these passages, but they sound more like Bob then me, so they will give you a flavor of Bob’s mind.

Like the general society, every firm has its own rule, norms, and cultural values, which we call firm specific. Our interest in this Article is firm-specific fairness norms, that is, norms of a firm that require Firm can be efficient only if their agents render loyal performance, by which we mean that agents perform their obligations diligently and honestly.

A mechanism for making a regime of firm specific fairness norms efficient is good agent character. We distinguish between good general character and good agent character, by which we mean the disposition of an agent of a firm to adhere to the firm’s normative standards, reflexively or on the basis of a commitment even when again the agent’s interest.

General character and agent character are separable psychologically. To illustrate, the Mafia specializes in businesses that require loyalty among members and ruthlessness toward outsiders.

Agents with authentic good character and agents who are good readers of character enjoy a competitive advantage in finding partners for cooperative ventures. Evolution has, consequently, fitted us to signal and detect character. Thus evolutionary forces operating among and within firms should select for both good agent character and good insight into character.

The second phase of our collaborations began after we both semi-retired, and Bob and I became office-mates in an office set aside for retirees. Once that occurred, we began co-hosting a lunch with one, two, or three colleagues every Thursday. Some of the colleagues we invited we already knew; some we didn’t. Some came to one lunch, others, like Jon Simon, Chris Kutz, and Hanoch Dagan, attended periodically, and Mark Gergen attended regularly. The lunches had a social aspect, but they were mainly intellectual, often focusing on what folks were working on. They were sort of mini-salons.

I plan to continue the lunches, with Mark’s help in selecting guests, but they won’t be the same without Bob. Bob always had important and stimulating things to say. In one of our last lunches together he stated that Trump was a socialist. There were five folks at the lunch, including Bob and me, and as you can imagine controversy ensued. I tried to tone it down by remarking that Bob was speaking metaphorically, but he wouldn’t have it; he was speaking literally.

I miss Bob very much as a collaborator, but I miss him enormously as a dear close friend.

-- Mel Eisenberg

Of course, our scholarly collaborations were especially meaningful.  We co-authored four papers relating to legal process and procedure.  Of special importance were our efforts, led by Bob, to spread the economic analysis of law and legal institutions throughout the world. This included our joint editing of the International Review of Law and Economics and our joint origination of the Comparative Law and Economics Forum (CLEF) with Guy Horsmans and Gerard Hertig as well as Bob’s founding and support of the Central and Latin American law and economics organization.er

Bob’s collaborations with JSP students were incredible. He co-authored a variety of academic papers and a couple of books by my count with at least five or six of our most talented graduate students. (Now successful academics at a variety of institutions).

Finally, but at least as important to me were the multiple dinners with my wife Gail and Blair and Bob and the many, many conversations including regular discussions during the years in which Bob was ill. Along the way, I had the opportunity to get to know two of Bob and Blair’s children -- John and Bo --as they grew up and matured into wonderful, mature adults.  

--- Dan Rubinfeld

--Katerina Linos

Noah Baum—who was taken from us too soon—was my teaching assistant in that class. He was one of Bob’s students, and through him I learned about the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, where Bob was a pioneering and influential member of the faculty who embodied that department’s interdisciplinary spirit for decades.

I applied to the JSP program and was fortunate enough to be admitted. I became one of Bob’s students, and over those years I came to see up close the boundless curiosity and depth of thought that so many have celebrated. Our conversations revealed his vast range of knowledge and interests. He was just as comfortable discussing sophisticated economic models as he was Rawls’ theory of justice, the poetry of Auden, or psychological theories of regret.

Bob was a wonderful mentor who encouraged me to pursue questions with the same disregard for disciplinary boundaries that he had, and to bring rigor to their answers. He was also an unfailing advocate for his students. At a time when it wasn’t clear that an academic path would work out for me, he made phone calls and offered recommendations on my behalf that made a real difference. For that, I will always be grateful.

I came to know Bob and the Cooter family even better when I became employee number two at the Berkeley Electronic Press (perhaps I should have stayed longer!). The first “office” for bePress was in the kitchen of Bob and Blair’s house on Arch Street. I began in the kitchen before earning a promotion to the dining room. No one who has spent time in that home will be surprised that I was welcomed almost as family.

We would spend mornings around the breakfast table discussing anything other than electronic publishing and, this being the Cooter household, take breaks to play basketball at the park or ping pong in the backyard. The warmth that Bob, Blair, and Joe showed me was the same they extended to the countless guests they hosted over the years. I have to imagine that this spirit of generosity was part of what made Bob so welcome around the world as he traveled to conduct research and spread the influence of law and economics.

When I began my first academic job, I had the privilege of interacting with Bob as part of the same scholarly community. Many talks I attended as a junior professor were dense with jargon and difficult to decipher, but Bob’s always stood out for their clarity. He had an unmatched ability to find the right analogy or allegory to convey an idea.

Two moments stand out. In a lecture honoring a colleague who was receiving a chair, Bob extolled the virtues of Humphrey the Whale—a humpback who became a Bay Area cause célèbre in the late 1980s after wandering into San Francisco Bay. While Humphrey came to symbolize being directionless, Bob drew a different lesson: academics, too, are meant to wander and explore. We may not always be headed in the right direction, but through that process we discover.

He also gave a stirring and heartfelt address when he accepted the Coase Medal from the American Law and Economics Association for his career achievements. Rather than reviewing his own contributions, he celebrated what he had learned from others, saying that receiving the award was like being named the best chef at a potluck. What mattered most to him was seeing what everyone else had brought to the table.

When I joined the Berkeley faculty, I was thrilled to become one of Bob’s colleagues. His health had begun to falter by then, and we did not spend as much time together as I would have liked, but there were still flashes of his insight and wit. In the weeks before his passing, I heard his wonder at the capabilities of large language models along with his frustration that ChatGPT did not grasp the central themes of the novel he was writing. We were also looking forward to collaborating on the next edition of his foundational textbook—co-authored with Tom Ulen—on law and economics.

He sent us an email in his final days dividing up some of the work and signing off, as he sometimes did, “Man plans, and God laughs.” Unfortunately, there turned out to be some truth to that, but nothing will diminish the profound influence he had on me and on so many others. He will always be the person who set the standard for academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and devotion to family that I look up to.

-- Adam Badawi

-KT Albiston

2. I was long in awe of Bob’s ability to attack talented students and then bring out the best in them. My first impulse was spite and envy, Salieri to his Mozart. But I restrained myself; he became a model mentor for me to emulate. He did not “direct” his students so much as urge them to identify important problems to resolve, and once they did, he helped them frame their project and sharpen their analysis. Then, he helped place them in good positions. His record is unsurpassed in JSP. I won’t list the names of his students for fear of inadvertently missing some. But I do want to tell a story about one of them. Once, soon after Bob had received his kidney transplant, I popped into the house on Arch Street to see how he was doing. He looked terrible. Still, he asked what I was up to, and I mentioned a book on the emergence of the modern Anglo-American criminal justice system that I had been working on for years. He told me I was an economic historian and offered some penetrating comments and some material I might read. Then conversation turned to his latest project, an economic analysis of public law, a companion to his earlier study of private law. It was about to get under way with Michael Gilbert, a student with whom we both had worked, and who now holds a chair in law at UVA. Well, Bob and Michael’s book was published to acclaim in 2022, a testimony both to Bob and Michael, and I’m still working on my book. That was Bob’s work ethic and delight in ideas, as well as his singular ability to inspire students and co-authors.

3. During a difficult period in my life, Bob and Blair quietly extended a helping hand. I was sleeping on the sun porch of a friend’s crowded house and did not have the energy even to look for a place of my own, though I was dimly aware that fall was approaching and I needed to. Out of the blue—I did not even know that they were aware of my misery—I received a note from Bob (or was it, Blair?) suggesting that I move into the basement apartment of their Arch Street house. It was a godsend. They accorded me privacy. They fed me at times. Their family was a consolation. I healed. That debt can never be repaid.

--Malcolm Feeley

-- Mike Gilbert

--Maureen Young, JD, MA, PhD (JSP)

I said to him, “I’ve been talking to my friends, and we sometimes get to discussing what it’s all about, why are we here, and what should we be doing with our lives?”  For the most part, my friends weren’t religious, and we were all sufficiently well-off that we could say we weren't materialistic, so when confronted with these big questions, most people seemed to say some version of  ‘I just want to be happy.’”  But for me, that didn’t sit right, and I wasn’t sure why. 

Was it overly hedonistic?  Maybe, but even as a sophomore, I knew happiness isn’t the same as pleasure.

Was it overly simplistic?  Maybe, but there are other simple aphorisms that I agreed with wholeheartedly, like my parent’s bumper sticker: “Don’t believe everything you think.”

But I couldn’t figure out why “just wanting to be happy” felt shallow; I was an econ major (surprise surprise), and so why shouldn’t I organize my life around trying to maximize my happiness? 

But of course my Dad knew the answer: he told me that the search for happiness shouldn’t be an objective, but rather: Happiness is a byproduct of a life well-lived.   

But what does it mean to live well?

Something many of you may not know, is that there is figure, a mythological figure, who my father idolized and identified with, and that is Odysseus.  In fact, my Dad spent his final years writing a story that entwined his own life, and in particular a summer he spent hitch-hiking across America, with the Odyssey and Odysseus voyage home after the Trojan War. 

And so, many of the core values present in the heroic figure of Odysseus were also fundamental to how my father lived his life, and what he thought it meant to live well.  In particular he valued: intelligence, curiosity, culture, athleticism, and family.

Odysseus was of course renowned for his cleverness.  Odysseus was responsible for the Trojan Horse, the ploy that allowed the Greeks to breach the walls of the city of Troy and end a 10-year war.  And on his voyage home, he was constantly confronted with perils that he overcame with cunning. Monsters like the Cyclops, who captured Odysseus and his men, and then planned on eating them.  Well, Odysseus told the Cyclops his name was “no one” and then he got the Cyclops drunk.  After he passed out, Odysseus blinded the cyclops, and then snuck out of the cave tied underneath the Cyclop’s flock of sheep.   As the Cyclops called for help, his Cyclops friends called back “what is wrong,” he could only say “No one blinded me.  No one is escaping.”

While my father didn’t apply his intelligence and cunning to blinding ancient monsters or tricking sorceress’s into turning his friends from pigs back into people again; but instead he shaped the field of law and economics into a rigorous, global discipline through scholarship, teaching, and institution-building.  He held honorary doctorates from Universities in Germany and Peru, he was awarded the Ronald H. Coase Medal, and he was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which yesterday the Dean of the Law School compared to the Hall of Fame for Academics.  But of course, both Odysseus and my father were much more than simply intelligent.   

While cleverness and cunning are generally seen as the primary characteristic of Odysseus, a lesser known value of his was his curiosity, and his love of art.  This is best shown in the story of the sirens: creatures who lived on a rocky island, and whose song was so alluring that anyone who heard it would sail into the rocks and die.  But Odysseus longed to hear the song for himself, and so he tied himself to the mast, while instructing his crew to put beeswax in their ears, but leave his ears unclogged.  As the ship passed by the rocks Only Odysseus heard the siren’s song – and he screamed and begged his crew to untie him so that he could leap into the waves and swim to his death; but of course they were deaf to his pleas, and they rowed past the island, unperturbed. 

What greater sign of curiosity, and what greater sign of a dedication to art and culture could there be than risking your life to hear a song.  Like Odysseus, my father was more an appreciator of art than a creator, and no form of art could be closer to the siren’s song than the Opera that my father loved.   

Like Odysseus, my father explored far away places, and he used those experiences to gain a deeper understanding into how the world works.  Places like Papua New Guinea, outer Mongolia, and the Indian tribes of the American Southwest.  When I traveled with him, we’d arrive in a new country, I’d be exhausted from the flight and eager to get to the hotel, but my dad would excitedly engage our taxi driver in conversation about national politics, or the production of local textiles, or the taxi driver’s dreams for his family.  My dad believed that everyone could offer insight into how the world worked, and that by understanding different people and different cultures, we could gain a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the world.   

Odysseus wasn’t the greatest warrior – he wasn’t Achilles, or Hector, possessing superhuman strength or speed.  But he was a capable warrior and athlete, as I’ll tell you more about in a couple minutes.

My Dad played soccer for as long as he could, and then, when his knees no longer allowed it, he switched to running.  He ran his first marathon in his 50s, and the second and last marathon he ran, he won in his age class. 

But eventually a time came when he couldn’t run anymore, and so he switched to swimming.  And then, after the fungus attacked his brain and he could no longer swim, he threw himself wholeheartedly into weight-lifting, setting up a full power rack and metal cage, complete with barbells, dumbbells, and bench in his garage.  Of course, by then he could barely walk unassisted, but this was just another example of his incredible optimism and eagerness to improve himself.

And lastly, I want to talk about family. 

Odysseus was devoted to his wife Penelope and their child, Telemachus.  Throughout his voyage, and his trials and adventures, Odysseus yearned to return home to his wife.  And when he finally gets back, he finds that his home is beset with suitors, who all believed that he had died and were vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage.  Odysseus and his son slaughter the suitors in his own hall – this is the demonstration of Odysseus’ athletic prowess that I alluded to a moment ago, although admittedly this part of the story that isn’t analogous to my Dad—as I was saying, Odysseus and his son slaughter the suitors and he reveals himself to Penelope. 

But he’s been gone for so long that she is afraid that is a trick or that the gods are playing a cruel joke on her.  So, to test him, she orders a servant to move their marriage bed out of the bridal chamber.  And Odysseus reacts with shock and anger: “Who dares move my bed, it cannot be moved!”

Odysseus passed the test.  He was the one who had built the bed.  And he built it out of a living tree and it was deeply rooted in the center of his home and his life.  The unmovable bed symbolizes his fidelity to Penelope and shows that despite all of his wandering, his life of adventure, and change; that despite all of that, his heart and his essence were rooted in the home and in his marriage.

Well, when my Dad came home from his adventures, he didn’t find our home full of suitors that he needed me and my brother to help slaughter.  And my Dad didn’t build his bed out of a living tree.   But he built the leaves in our dinning room table, where our family sat down to eat dinner every night.  Those family dinners were full of discourse, curiosity, engagement, and good food, and they were the center of his family and his life, and an enduring and permanent metaphor for his commitment and devotion to our family and to my mom.  He was married to my mom for 57 years, and even in the past few years, which were so difficult, he continued to say he was the luckiest man in the world because she married him. 

In conclusion, or perhaps as a way to kick off the rest of the speakers, my father lived a life full of academic excellence, exploration, art, culture, athletics, and commitment to family.  He lived a wonderful life, he lived a happy life, and he lived an epic life.

--Dylan Penningroth