Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Law,

#601

Tom Ginsburg

#32797

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is primarily known as a scholar of international and comparative law, with a focus on constitutions and a regional specialty of East Asia.

#602

Andrzej Rzepliński

#24544

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Andrzej Rzepliński is a Polish lawyer, Professor of Jurisprudence, human right expert, member of International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a judge of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from 2007 and its president from 2010 to 2016.

#603

M. Elizabeth Magill

#35470

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Mary Elizabeth Magill is an American legal scholar and academic administrator, currently serving as the 9th president of the University of Pennsylvania since July 2022. Magill previously served as provost of the University of Virginia from 2019 to 2022 and dean of Stanford Law School from 2012 to 2019.

#604

John Tasioulas

#16344

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

John Tasioulas is a Greek-Australian moral and legal philosopher. He is the inaugural Director of the Institute for Ethics in AI , and Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship.

#605

Lynn M. LoPucki

#19930

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Lynn M. LoPucki holds professorial positions at both UCLA School of Law as well as Harvard Law School. LoPucki is the Security Pacific Bank Professor of Law at UCLA Law and the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law. LoPucki is a nationally recognized expert on bankruptcy and compiled a widely used research database on bankruptcy in the U.S. called Bankruptcy Research Database which forms the basis for a large portion of empirical academic research on bankruptcy.

#606

Todung Mulya Lubis

#15606

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Todung Mulya Lubis, S.H., L.LM. is a lawyer and activist in Indonesia. He founded The law firm Lubis Santosa and Maulana in 1986, later Lubis Santosa and Maramis. Education and career Lubis grew up on the island of Sumatra. After finishing primary school in Edinburgh, he went to secondary school in Pekanbaru, Riau and senior high school in Medan. After completing his studies in high school, Lubis became interested in the legal world. He completed his undergraduate Law degree at the University of Indonesia ; his LLM at the University of California, Berkeley; a second LLM at Harvard Law School; and his JSD at the University of California, Berkeley.

#607

Chris Matthews

#4665

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Christopher John Matthews is an American political commentator, retired talk show host, and author. Matthews hosted his weeknight hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, on America's Talking and later on MSNBC, from 1997 until March 2, 2020. He announced on his final episode that he was retiring, following an accusation that he had made inappropriate comments to a Hardball guest four years earlier. On that occasion, he stated: "The younger generation's out there ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, in media, in fighting for their causes. They're improving the workplace...

#608

Matthew Kramer

#21817

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Matthew Henry Kramer is an American philosopher, currently Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He writes mainly in the areas of metaethics, normative ethics, legal philosophy, and political philosophy. He is a leading proponent of legal positivism. He has been Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy since 2000. He has been teaching at Cambridge University and at Churchill College since 1994.

#609

Bernice B. Donald

Bernice B. Donald

#44908

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Bernice Bouie Donald is an American lawyer and former judge who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 2011 to 2023. She previously served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee from 1995 to 2011.

#610

Gunnar Beck

#29690

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Gunnar Beck is a German politician, academic and lawyer. He is Member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany party and currently hold the position of deputy leader of the AfD in the European Parliament and Vice-President of the Identity & Democracy Group. He previously was, and currently remains, a reader in law at the SOAS, University of London.

#611

Friedrich Kessler

#34341

Overall Influence

1901 - 1998 (97 years)

Friedrich "Fritz" Kessler was an American law professor who taught at Yale Law School , University of Chicago Law School, and University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He was a contract law scholar, but he also wrote about trade regulation law. He was regarded as a member of the American Legal Realism School.

#612

Naomi Mezey

#37348

Overall Influence

Naomi Jewel Mezey is an American legal scholar and is a professor of law at Georgetown University. Mezey contributes significantly to the field of law and culture, with additional scholarly interests in legal theory and translation and statutory interpretation.

#613

Jeffrey L. Fisher

#31618

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Jeffrey L. Fisher is an American law professor and U.S. Supreme Court litigator who has argued forty-one cases and worked on dozens of others before the Supreme Court. He is co-director of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

#614

Kent Roach

#25155

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Kent Roach is a professor of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is well known for his expertise and writings on criminal law, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and more recently anti-terrorism law. He is a graduate of the university and served as a law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. Roach is a recipient of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship . He was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.

#615

Richard D. Freer

#35782

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Richard Freer is a leading American academic in civil procedure and the Robert Howell Hall Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia. He has written numerous articles and has published 11 books during his career. Currently, his book on civil procedure is the preferred text on the subject at many law schools throughout the country. Freer is also a member of the Barbri staff and has lectured for Barbri for over thirty years.

#616

Christopher Yoo

Christopher Yoo

#17029

Overall Influence

Christopher S. Yoo is the John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the founding director of the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition. He is well known for his work on technology law, media law and copyright, and is among the most frequently cited authors in that domain. He is best known for being among the first academics to engage in the debate over network neutrality. He has taken a middle ground between a more restrictive and more permissive approach, animated by the belief that innovation needs room for experimentation if it is to thrive.

#617

Christine Chinkin

Christine Chinkin

#22765

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Christine Mary Chinkin is a Professor of International Law and founding Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She was a member of the four-person United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict created by the United Nations Human Rights Council. From January 2010, she is a member of the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. She is the Chair of the International Law Association, appointed in 2021.

#618

Lyman Ray Patterson

#27605

Overall Influence

1929 - 2003 (74 years)

Lyman Ray Patterson was an American law professor and an influential copyright scholar and historian. Biography Patterson was born in Macon, Georgia. He graduated from Mercer University, and obtained a master's degree in English from Northwestern University. After teaching English at Middle Georgia College, he joined the Army where he studied Russian at the Army Language School. During the Korean War he served as a translator of Russian radio broadcasts. Following the Army he attended law school at Mercer University. After practicing law for two years with the firm of Matthews, Maddox, Wal...

#619

Ernest Weinrib

#40926

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Ernest J. Weinrib is a legal academic who works on jurisprudence and legal philosophy, particularly the theory of private law. He teaches at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Theories In Weinrib's theories he sees the world of private law as being composed of "bilateral relationships between individuals whereby one person's right is always a function of another person's duty".

#620

John Feerick

#14764

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

John D. Feerick is a law professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York City. He served as the school's eighth dean from 1982 to 2002. From 2002 to 2004, he was the Leonard F. Manning Professor of Law at Fordham, and in 2004 was named to the Sidney C. Norris Chair of Law in Public Service.

#621

DeMaurice Smith

DeMaurice Smith

#17434

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

DeMaurice F. "De" Smith is the former executive director of the National Football League Players Association . He was elected unanimously on March 15, 2009. He was replaced by Lloyd Howell Jr. on June 23, 2023. As executive director of the NFLPA during the 2011 NFL lockout, Smith played a major role in helping the players and NFL owners come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.

#622

André Alen

#51732

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

André, Baron Alen has been a judge on the Constitutional Court of Belgium since 16 March 2001. He was also an associate professor at KU Leuven, where he taught constitutional law. He has been professor emeritus since 1 October 2015. Alen obtained a Licentiate in Law in 1973 and became Doctor of Law in 1983, both at this same university. From 9 January 2014 to 1 February 2016, Alen was President of the Constitutional Court.

#623

Lillian BeVier

#34702

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Lillian Riemer BeVier is a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She was the first woman to become a full professor at the law school, and she holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus.

#624

Savannah Guthrie

Savannah Guthrie

#5701

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Savannah Clark Guthrie is an Australian-born American broadcast journalist and attorney. She is a main co-anchor of the NBC News morning show Today, a position she has held since July 2012. Guthrie joined NBC News in September 2007 as a legal analyst and correspondent, regularly reporting on trials throughout the country. After serving as a White House correspondent between 2008 and 2011 and as co-anchor of the MSNBC program The Daily Rundown in 2010 and 2011, Guthrie was announced as the co-host of Todays third hour alongside Natalie Morales and Al Roker. In that role, she substituted as news anchor and main co-host and appeared as the chief legal analyst across all NBC platforms.

#625

John C. Harrison

#28626

Overall Influence

John C. Harrison is an American legal scholar who is the James Madison Distinguished Professor of Law and Joseph C. Carter, Jr. Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Early life and education Harrison graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977. He earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1980. While in law school, Harrison served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as articles editor for the The Yale Journal of International Law.

#626

Michael N. Schmitt

#23170

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Michael N. Schmitt is an American international law scholar specializing in international humanitarian law, use of force issues, and the international law applicable to cyberspace. He is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading, the G. Norman Lieber Distinguished Scholar at the Lieber Institute of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the Charles H. Stockton Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the US Naval War College.

#627

Paul Butler

#37372

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Paul Delano Butler is an American lawyer, former prosecutor, and current law professor of Georgetown University Law Center. He is a leading criminal law scholar, particularly in the area of race and jury nullification.

#628

Douglas Baird

#30625

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Douglas Gordon Baird is an American legal scholar, the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor and a former dean of the University of Chicago Law School. He joined the faculty in 1980 and served as the dean from 1994 to 1999. He is a leader in the field of bankruptcy law.

#629

Jeremy A. Rabkin

#35364

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Jeremy A. Rabkin is a professor of law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he teaches constitutional law and international law. Prior to joining the George Mason faculty in 2007, he spent 27 years as a professor of government at Cornell University. He holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Cornell.

#630

William Bundy

#7023

Overall Influence

1917 - 2000 (83 years)

William Putnam Bundy was an American attorney and analyst with the CIA. Bundy served as a foreign affairs advisor to both presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had key roles in planning the Vietnam War, serving as deputy to Paul Nitze at Defense under Kennedy and as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Johnson.

#631

Lina Khan

#14445

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (35 years)

Lina M. Khan is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission since 2021. While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". She was nominated by President Joe Biden to the Commission in March 2021, and has served since June 2021 following her confirmation. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.

#632

Cynthia Estlund

#33249

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. Career Estlund teaches labor law, employment law, and property law and has published numerous articles on the subject of labor and employment. In her book Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy , she argued that the workplace is a site of both comparatively successful integration and intense cooperation and sociability, and explored the implications for democratic theory and for labor and employment law. She has over twenty publications in peer-reviewed journals,...

#633

Cesar L. Villanueva

#24993

Overall Influence

Cesar L. Villanueva, also known as CLV, was the former Dean of the Ateneo Law School in Makati, Philippines. He is a certified public accountant and specializes in Philippine commercial law. Villanueva was nominated for the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines Villanueva is the valedictorian of his batch in Chevalier School, Angeles.

#634

Taliya Habrieva

Taliya Habrieva

#37029

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Taliya Yarullovna Habrieva is a Russian jurist. She was instrumental in preparing the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of Russia that allowed President Vladimir Putin to remain in power after 2024.

#635

William Blair

#18221

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Sir William James Lynton Blair is a British retired judge. He was previously a Queen's Counsel at London barristers' chambers 3 Verulam Buildings, specialising in domestic and international banking and finance law. He is the elder brother of Sir Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

#636

Michele Dauber

#16923

Overall Influence

Michele Landis Dauber is the Frederick I. Richman Professor at the Stanford Law School, and a Professor of Sociology, by courtesy. Early life Dauber graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993. She earned a JD from Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law in 1998, and a PhD in Sociology from its Graduate School in 2003.

#637

Charles Halpern

#20573

Overall Influence

Charles Halpern is a lawyer, activist, author, educator, and meditation practitioner. He also served as the founding dean of CUNY School of Law, and as a faculty member of various prominent law schools across the country.

#638

Rodney A. Smolla

#38087

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Rodney A. Smolla, is an American author, First Amendment scholar and lawyer. He is currently the president of the Vermont Law School, and former dean of the Widener University Delaware Law School until spring 2022. He was the 11th president of Furman University. In 2015, it was announced that on 1 July of that year, Smolla would become the dean of the newly separate Delaware Law School of Widener University.

#639

David E. Kendall

#17571

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

David Evan Kendall is an American attorney, a graduate of Wabash College, Yale Law School, and Worcester College, Oxford, who clerked with Supreme Court Justice Byron White, worked as associate counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and has been a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP of Washington, DC since 1981, where he has provided legal counsel to individuals and corporations on high-profile business and political matters.

#640

George Winterton

#35048

Overall Influence

1946 - 2008 (62 years)

George Graham Winterton was an Australian academic specialising in Australian constitutional law. Winterton taught for 28 years at the University of New South Wales before taking up an appointment of Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney in 2004.

#641

Suzie Navot

#29460

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Suzie Navot is an Israeli full professor of constitutional law. She is the Vice President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute. Prior to her appointment at the I.D.I, she was a member of faculty at the Striks Faculty of Law at the College of Management Academic Studies.

#642

Brian Gill, Lord Gill

#26910

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Brian Gill, Lord Gill, is a retired Scottish judge and legal academic. He served as Lord President and Lord Justice General from June 2012 until May 2015. Gill previously served as Lord Justice Clerk from 2001 to 2012, and as Chairman of the Scottish Law Commission from 1996 to 2001. As an advocate, he practised principally in agricultural law and is the author of The Law of Agricultural Holdings in Scotland. In 2007–2009, Gill undertook a far-reaching review of the civil courts system in Scotland, recommending a shift of much of the workload of the Court of Session to Scotland's local sheri...

#643

Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

#30712

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Geoffrey Cornell Hazard Jr. was Trustee Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught from 1994 to 2005, and the Thomas E. Miller Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. He was also Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School.

#644

Burke Marshall

#17320

Overall Influence

1922 - 2003 (81 years)

Burke Marshall was an American lawyer and who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division during the Civil Rights Movement. Early life Marshall was born in Plainfield, New Jersey. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1940, and received a BA from Yale University in 1943. He joined the army, working in the intelligence corps as a Japanese translator and cryptoanalyst. It was during his military service that he met Violet Person, whom he later married.

#645

Gail Heriot

#14409

Overall Influence

Gail L. Heriot is an American attorney and legal scholar serving as a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. Since 2007, she has been a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

#646

Egidijus Kūris

#20547

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Egidijus Kūris is a Lithuanian judge, professor and PhD in law. He is the former President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania and current representative justice for Lithuania to the European Court of Human Rights.

#647

James Gustave Speth

James Gustave Speth

#23929

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

James Gustave Speth is an American environmental lawyer and advocate who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Early life and education He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall and the Yale Law Journal, in 1969.

#648

Jerry L. Mashaw

#38593

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Jerry L. Mashaw is an American lawyer, currently the Sterling Professor Emeritus and professorial lecturer of law at Yale University, and also a published author. He is a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mashaw is a Marshall Scholar. He teaches courses in administrative law, legislation, social welfare policy and law, and regulation.

#649

Laurie Levenson

#33648

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Laurie Lou Levenson is a professor of law, William M. Rains Fellow, the David W. Burcham Chair in Ethical Advocacy, and Director of the Center for Legal Advocacy at Loyola Law School of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She teaches evidence, criminal law, criminal procedure, ethics, anti-terrorism, and white collar crime. She served as Loyola's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1996 to 1999. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she is the Director of the Loyola Center for Ethical Advocacy. She received the 2003 Professor of the Year awards from both Loyola Law School...

#650

Christian G. Fritz

#25507

Overall Influence

Christian G. Fritz is a legal historian and a law professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He writes on U.S. constitutional history, and his 2007 book American Sovereigns: the People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, published by Cambridge University Press, traces the historical roots of popular sovereignty in U.S. law.

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