The Most Influential People Across History
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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Law,
#701
Dhammika Dharmapala
#11031
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Dhammika Dharmapala is an economist who is the Paul H. and Theo Leffman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is known for his research into corporate tax avoidance, corporate use of tax havens, and the corporate use of base erosion and profit shifting techniques.
Go to Profile#702
Vikramaditya Khanna
#37868
Overall Influence
Vikramaditya Khanna is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the founding and current editor of the India Law Abstracts and the White Collar Crime Abstracts on the Social Science Research Network.
Go to Profile#703
Janice R. Bellace
#17271
Overall Influence
Janice R. Bellace is a Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School of Business. She held the Samuel Blank Chair in Legal Studies from 1996 until 2018. She is the author of numerous academic books, chapters, articles and papers; her research interests are in the field of labor and employment law, particularly international labor law.
Go to Profile#704
Catherine Redgwell
#25738
Overall Influence
Catherine Redgwell is Chichele Professor of Public International Law and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Geoengineering Programme of the Oxford Martin School. Professor Redgwell previously held positions as Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, at the University of Oxford , the University of Nottingham and the University of Manchester. She has also served on secondment to the Legal Advisers, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Go to Profile#705
Gil Carlos Rodríguez Iglesias
#12164
Overall Influence
1946 - 2019 (73 years)
Gil Carlos Rodríguez Iglesias , was a Spanish judge at the European Court of Justice between 31 January 1986 and 7 October 2004. He was 9th President of the Court from 7 October 1994 to 7 October 2004.
Go to Profile#706
Rudolf Mellinghoff
#37566
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Rudolf Mellinghoff is a German judge, jurisprudent and tax law expert who served as President of the Federal Fiscal Court from 2011 to 2020. He was also a justice of the Federal Constitutional Court serving in the court's second senate .
Go to Profile#707
Lucian Bebchuk
#13144
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Lucian Arye Bebchuk is a professor at Harvard Law School focusing on economics and finance. Life and career Bebchuk has a B.A. in mathematics and economics from the University of Haifa , an LL.B. from the University of Tel Aviv , an LL.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics, also from Harvard . He was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1983 to 1985. He joined the Harvard Law faculty in 1986. Bebchuck is the co-author, with Jesse Fried, of Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation.
Go to Profile#708
Andrew Vachss
#6160
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Andrew Henry Vachss was an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths. Early life and career Vachss grew up in Manhattan on the Lower West Side. Before becoming a lawyer, Vachss held many front-line positions in child protection. He was a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, and a New York City social-services caseworker. He worked in Biafra, entering the war zone just before the fall of the country. There he worked to find a land route to bring donated food and medical supplies across the border aft...
Go to Profile#709
Kendall Thomas
#9434
Overall Influence
Kendall Thomas is Nash Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, at Columbia Law School. Biography Kendall Thomas did his J.D. at Yale University's Law School in 1983 after having obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Yale in 1978.
Go to Profile#710
Thomas W. Merrill
#36097
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Thomas W. Merrill, a legal scholar, is the Charles Evans Hughes professor at Columbia Law School. He has also taught at Yale Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. He is a leader in three fields: property, administrative, and environmental law. He received a B.A. from Grinnell College in 1971 and a B.A. with first-class honors in philosophy, politics and economics in 1973 from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He received his JD from the University of Chicago Law School in 1977 and went on to clerk for Judge David L. Bazelon of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then United States Supreme Court Justice Harry A.
Go to Profile#711
Debra Wong Yang
#19966
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Debra Wong Yang is the former United States Attorney for the Central District of California. She was appointed in May 2002 by President George W. Bush, who made her the first Asian American woman to serve as a United States Attorney. In 2009, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa nominated Yang to a vacancy on the Los Angeles Police Commission. In 2016, she was listed as the potential choice for SEC Chief in Donald Trump's cabinet.
Go to Profile#712
Bernard Jackson
#40381
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Bernard Stuart Jackson is a former law professor at Liverpool Polytechnic, the University of Kent , and the University of Liverpool . From 1997-2009 he was Alliance Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, Co-Director of its Centre for Jewish Studies and Director of its Agunah Research Unit . Latterly, he was Professor of Law and Jewish Studies at Liverpool Hope University . His major academic interests are legal theory, semiotics, and Jewish law.
Go to Profile#713
Steve Charnovitz
#27624
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Steve Charnovitz is a scholar of public international law, living in the United States. He teaches at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., and is best known for his writings on the linkages between trade and environment and trade and labor rights. He is also known for his scholarship on the historical role of nongovernmental organizations in international governance.
Go to Profile#714
Andrzej Duda
#17155
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Andrzej Sebastian Duda is a Polish lawyer and politician who has served as president of Poland since 6 August 2015. Before becoming president, Andrzej Duda was a member of the Polish Lower House from 2011 to 2014 and the European Parliament from 2014 to 2015.
Go to Profile#715
Lawrence G. Sager
#39644
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Lawrence Gene Sager is a former dean of the University of Texas School of Law. He holds the Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield Regents Chair. Sager, who joined the Law School faculty in 2002, is the 13th dean in the Law School's 123-year history. He is best known for his theory of underenforcement.
Go to Profile#716
Stig Strömholm
#34211
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Stig Fredrik Strömholm , Swedish, former rector magnificus of Uppsala University and past president of Academia Europaea. Strömholm received his education in Uppsala . He completed a doctorate in Law in Uppsala in 1966. He was Professor in Jurisprudence in Uppsala from 1969, and Professor in Private Law and Conflict of Laws there 1982–1997. After an appointment as prorector of Uppsala University 1978–1989, he was rector magnificus of the university 1989–1997. On 5 June 1992 Strömholm received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Go to Profile#717
Stefan Mieczysław Grzybowski
#39314
Overall Influence
1902 - 2003 (101 years)
Stefan Mieczysław Grzybowski was a full professor of law at the Jagiellonian University. Early life and education Grzybowski was born in Zator, Poland; his father, Stefan Marian Grzybowskiwas a physician. He graduated in law from the Jagiellonian University in 1926, and defending his Ph.D. on the subject of the legal nature of a public commercial company in 1927. In 1931, the Scientific Culture Fund granted him a scholarship to study abroad and three years later he published his habilitation thesis titled Personal protection of the attitude towards the work after the artist's death - general ...
Go to Profile#718
Avi Bell
#14196
Overall Influence
Abraham Bell is an Israeli Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law. Bell received his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, and his S.J.D. from Harvard. He interned in the office of Israeli Supreme Court judge Mishael Cheshin.
Go to Profile#719
Abraham David Sofaer
#22071
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Abraham David Sofaer is an American attorney and jurist who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and legal adviser to the United States State Department. After resigning from the State Department, he became the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs at the Hoover Institution.
Go to Profile#720
Richard Bonnie
#28442
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Richard J. Bonnie is the Harrison Foundation Professor of Law and Medicine, Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Science, and Director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia School of Law. He teaches and writes about criminal law, bioethics, and public policies relating to mental health, substance abuse, aging and public health.
Go to Profile#721
Bob Hawke
#4356
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Robert James Lee Hawke was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party , having previously served as the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1969 to 1980 and president of the Labor Party national executive from 1973 to 1978.
Go to Profile#722
Daniel B. Rodriguez
#42380
Overall Influence
Daniel B. Rodriguez is the former Dean of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and holds the Harold Washington Professorship. He was the 2014 President of the Association of American Law Schools , and served on the American Bar Association's Commission on the Future of Legal Services. He currently acts as an advisor to the ABA's Center for Legal Innovation.
Go to Profile#723
J. Harvie Wilkinson III
#25680
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an American jurist who serves as a United States circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His name has been raised at several junctures in the past as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court.
Go to Profile#724
Hubert Lacroix
#15387
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Hubert T. Lacroix is a Canadian lawyer who last served as the President and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , the national public radio and television broadcaster, from 2008 until 2018.
Go to Profile#725
Lance Liebman
#33358
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Lance Liebman is an American law professor. He is the former Dean of Columbia Law School, and served as the Director of the American Law Institute from May 1999 to May 2014. Education Liebman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1962, graduating summa cum laude with the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize, and earned an M.A. in history from the University of Cambridge in 1964. He graduated magna cum laude in 1967 from Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review.
Go to Profile#726
Benjamin Ginsberg
#32113
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Benjamin Langer Ginsberg is an American lawyer. He is most well known for his work representing the Republican Party and its political campaigns, candidates, members of Congress and state legislatures and governors, as well as corporations, trade associations, businesses, and individuals participating in the political process.
Go to Profile#727
Charles Sabel
#17330
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Charles Fredrick Sabel is an American academic and professor of Law and Social Science at the Columbia Law School. His research centers on public innovations, European Union governance, labor standards, economic development, and ultra-robust networks.
Go to Profile#728
Steven Walt
#39146
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Steven D. Walt is a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He teaches courses on contracts, sales/commercial paper, legal philosophy, bankruptcy and secured transactions. Biography Walt graduated cum laude with a B.A. from Kalamazoo College in 1976. Walt also holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago .
Go to Profile#729
Martin Friedland
#24836
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Martin Lawrence Friedland, is a Canadian lawyer, academic and author. He received a BComm. , LL.B. , and honorary LL.D. from the University of Toronto, and a PhD and LL.D from Cambridge University. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1960. He taught at Osgoode Hall Law School until 1965 when he joined the University of Toronto as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 1968 and served as dean from 1972–1979.
Go to Profile#730
Cynthia Nicoletti
#37167
Overall Influence
Cynthia Lisa Nicoletti is an American legal historian. She is an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Early life and education Nicoletti earned her Bachelor of Arts degree, Master's degree, and PhD from the University of Virginia. Her dissertation, which examined the issue of whether secession could have been legally valid, earned the 2011 American Society for Legal History's William Nelson Cromwell Prize.
Go to Profile#731
Susan Haack
#665
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Susan Haack is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Go to Profile#732
John Fabian Witt
#39405
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the 2013 Bancroft Prize in history of the Americas and, in 2020, American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19.
Go to Profile#733
Doug Linder
#22792
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Douglas O. Linder is an American author, narrator, and historian. He is the creator of the Famous Trials website hosted by University of Missouri, which covers over 50 famous trials throughout history. Linder has coauthored a research analysis The Happy Lawyer with Nancy Levit about the challenges facing the legal profession, as well as The Good Lawyer published by Oxford in 2014.
Go to Profile#734
Eugene Kontorovich
#47546
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Eugene Kontorovich is a legal scholar, specializing in constitutional and international law. Career Kontorovich studied law at the University of Chicago. He later clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 2011, he received a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and was later awarded the Federalist Society's Bator Award, given annually to a young scholar under 40.
Go to Profile#735
Maryellen Fullerton
#14069
Overall Influence
Maryellen Fullerton is an American lawyer and academic. She is a professor of law and former interim dean at Brooklyn Law School. She was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento for 2012-13.
Go to Profile#736
Paula Franzese
#33630
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Paula Ann Franzese is an American legal scholar based in New Jersey who focuses on government ethics and property law. She is the Peter W. Rodino Professor of Law at the Seton Hall University School of Law. Franzese is an educator who has been named one of the 26 best law teachers in the United States. She is also a prominent advocate for government ethics reform, a spokesperson for legal education, a housing advocate, and an author.
Go to Profile#737
Anthony Joseph Scirica
#34665
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Anthony Joseph Scirica is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Early life and career Scirica was born on December 16, 1940, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University in 1962. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1965. He was a Fulbright scholar at Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela in 1966. He was in private practice of law in Norristown from 1966 to 1980. He was an assistant district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, from 1967 to 1969.
Go to Profile#738
Reinhard Zimmermann
#27338
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Reinhard Zimmermann is a German jurist and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. Since 2011 he has been the President of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.
Go to Profile#739
Lindsey Graham
#13251
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Lindsey Olin Graham is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 2019 to 2021.
Go to Profile#740
Martha Field
#39248
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Martha Amanda Field is an American legal scholar who serves as the Langdell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is a noted scholar of constitutional law, family law, and issues bioethics such as the rights of the mentally challenged.
Go to Profile#741
Paul Goldstein
#44177
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Paul Goldstein is a law professor at Stanford Law School. A globally recognized expert on intellectual property law, Goldstein is the author of an influential four-volume treatise on U.S. copyright law and a five-volume treatise on international copyright law, as well as leading casebooks on intellectual property and international intellectual property. He has authored nine books including five novels, Errors and Omissions, A Patent Lie, Secret Justice, Legal Asylum and Havana Requiem, which won the 2013 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Some of his other works include Copyright’s Highway: ...
Go to Profile#742
Charles Whitebread
#42784
Overall Influence
1943 - 2008 (65 years)
Charles H. Whitebread was the George T. Pfleger Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law School. He was an authority on criminal law and criminal procedure, writing and lecturing on those and other subjects throughout the United States.
Go to Profile#743
Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff
#43941
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff , is the Austrian ambassador in Prague. Background He belongs to the aristocratic Austrian-Moravian mediatised noble family Trauttmansdorff. He is also referred to by the courtesy style and title, "His Illustrious Highness Count Ferdinand von und zu Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg" .
Go to Profile#744
Burt Neuborne
#29133
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Burt Neuborne is the Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties at New York University School of Law and the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice. Career Neuborne graduated from Cornell University in 1961 and Harvard Law School in 1964. He served as National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1981-1986, Special Counsel to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1990-1996, and as a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission from 1988-1992. From 1995 to 2007, he directed the legal program of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Go to Profile#745
James Forman Jr.
#15225
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
James Forman Jr. is an American legal scholar currently on leave from serving as the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and a co-founder of the Maya Angelou School in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#746
Julie E. Cohen
#38945
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Julie E. Cohen is an American legal scholar. Since 1999, she has been a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching and writing about copyright, intellectual property, and privacy. She is also currently a member of the advisory board for public interest organizations Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge. Along with academic articles, Cohen is the author of Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice and a co-author of casebook Copyright in a Global Information Economy.
Go to Profile#747
Vida Johnson
#38199
Overall Influence
Vida B. Johnson is an American criminal defense attorney and associate professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Johnson works in the Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic and Criminal Justice Clinic, and supervises attorneys in the E. Barrett Prettyman Post-Graduate Fellowship Program. Johnson regularly writes in the area of criminal law and procedure.
Go to Profile#748
Chel Diokno
#16789
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Jose Manuel Tadeo Icasiano "Chel" Diokno is a Filipino lawyer, educator, and human rights advocate. He serves as chairman of the Free Legal Assistance Group , the founding dean of the De La Salle University College of Law , and the chairman of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation. He has served as a special counsel of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.
Go to Profile#749
Mark J. Roe
#31611
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Mark J. Roe is the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, appointed in 2001. Roe is the author of Strong Managers, Weak Owners and Political Determinants of Corporate Governance , in which he shows underlying connections between business structures and national political configurations. He explores the political economy of American corporate lawmaking in a series of articles, two of which are published in the Harvard Law Review and Stanford Law Review. He also comments on business and finance legal issues in such publications as the Financial Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.
Go to Profile#750
Preeta D. Bansal
#26494
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Preeta D. Bansal is an American lawyer who served as the General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor to the federal Office of Management and Budget from 2009 until 2011. Prior to her work in the Obama administration, she served as a law partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and as the Solicitor General of New York during Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's first term. She also has been a member and past chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom . She is currently a lecturer at MIT and senior advisor at the Laboratory for Social Machines based at the MIT M...
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