John Osborn

John E. Osborn has been a corporate lawyer, life sciences industry executive and board member, lecturer, writer and diplomat.

For more than twenty years, John was a senior executive and general counsel with notable life sciences and healthcare companies, including Fortune 1000 company Cephalon, McKesson Specialty Health/US Oncology, Dendreon and Onyx Pharmaceuticals. In these roles he was responsible for directing the legal and corporate affairs functions, including corporate governance, intellectual property, government relations and public policy. He also has been a senior advisor with the international law firm Hogan Lovells, an executive-in-residence with private equity firm Warburg Pincus, and a board member of publicly traded and privately held companies in the specialty pharmaceutical, healthcare IT and biomedical device sectors.

John was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2007, and confirmed by the United States Senate in 2008, to serve as a member of the bipartisan United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. After working on the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush, he served from 1989 to 1992 with the U.S. Department of State under Secretary James A. Baker III. Following law school, he clerked for Senior Circuit Judge Albert V. Bryan of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Early in his career, he worked on Capitol Hill in the offices of former Congressman Jim Leach (R-Iowa), the late Senator John Heinz (R-Pa.) and the Congressional Budget Office.

In addition to his appointment at the University of Washington School of Law, he lectures regularly at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Ann Arbor and has held visiting research appointments at Oxford (socio-legal studies), Princeton (politics) and the University of California, Los Angeles (public health). He has been a member of the board of governors of the East-West Center in Honolulu, a visiting scholar in East European Studies with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and an Eisenhower Fellow to Northern Ireland. John has been published widely in scholarly journals, in the press, and online at Forbes.com, STAT Health, Health Affairs and Xconomy. John has been elected to membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Law Institute, and the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, and was named by Lawdragon to its 2008 ranking of the 500 Leading Lawyers in America.

Education

• B.A., 1979, University of Iowa
• J.D., 1983, University of Virginia
• M.I.P.P., 1992, The Johns Hopkins University

Publications

Peer Reviewed Journals & Law Reviews

• John E. Osborn, Can I Tell You the Truth? A Comparative Perspective on Regulating Off-Label Scientific and Medical Information, 10 Yale J. Health Pol’y L. & Ethics 299-356 (2010).
• John E. Osborn, Northern Ireland's Burden of History, 1 Geo. J. Int’l Aff. 57-65 (2000).
• Edwin D. Williamson & John E. Osborn, A U.S. Perspective on Treaty Succession and Related Issues in the Wake of the Breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia, 33 Va. J. Int’l L. 261-74 (1993).
• John E. Osborn, Comment, On the Reunification of Germany, 86 Am. J. Int’l L. 343-45 (1992).
• John E. Osborn, The Reporter’s Confidentiality Privilege: Updating the Empirical Evidence after a Decade of Subpoenas, 17 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev 57-81 (1985).
• John E. Osborn, Note, Renegotiation of the United States-British Virgin Islands Tax Convention: Prelude to the End of Treaty Shopping?, 22 Va. J. Int’l L. 381-412 (1982).

Other Publications

• John Osborn, David Beier & Merv Turner, Desperately Seeking Price Reform: Pharma Needs To Embrace Transparency & Value To Protect Innovation, Forbes (Aug 13, 2015, 09:23am EDT).
• John E. Osborn, Statement before the U.S. Antitrust Modernization Commission, Antitrust and the New Economy (Nov. 8, 2005).