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

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Law,

#801

William B. Gould IV

#45771

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

William B. Gould IV is an American lawyer currently the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus at Stanford Law School. Gould was the first black professor at Stanford Law School. Gould was born on July 16, 1936, in Boston, Massachusetts to William B. Gould III and Leah F. Gould. He grew up in Long Branch, New Jersey. Gould attended the University of Rhode Island and then Cornell Law School. An Episcopalian, he was baptized at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Dedham, Massachusetts and confirmed at St. James in Long Branch.

#802

Erik Jayme

#55855

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Erik Jayme is a German jurist. Until his retirement in 2002 he was professor of Private Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at the University of Heidelberg. From 1997 to 1999 he served as president of the Institut de Droit International and has served as vice president of The Hague Academy of International Law since 2004.

#803

Constance Backhouse

#31235

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Constance Barbara Backhouse, is a Canadian legal scholar and historian, specializing in gender and race discrimination. She is a Distinguished University Professor and University Research Chair at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. In addition to her academic publications, Backhouse is the author of several books on feminist- and race-related legal rights topics. Backhouse is President of the American Society for Legal History, and is the first non-US scholar to hold this position.

#804

Marc Rotenberg

#15515

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Marc Rotenberg is president and founder of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, an independent non-profit organization, incorporated in Washington, D.C. Rotenberg is the editor of The AI Policy Sourcebook, a member of the OECD Expert Group on AI, and helped draft the Universal Guidelines for AI. He teaches the GDPR and privacy law at Georgetown Law and is coauthor of Privacy Law and Society and The Privacy Law Sourcebook . Rotenberg is a founding board member and former chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain.

#805

Elizabeth Price Foley

Elizabeth Price Foley

#36077

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Elizabeth Price Foley is a conservative American legal theorist who writes and comments in the fields of constitutional law, bioethics, and health care law. She is a Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, a public law school located in Miami, Florida. She also serves as Counsel to the Washington, D.C. office of BakerHostetler, LLP, where she practices constitutional, appellate, and food and drug law.

#806

Bayless Manning

#40934

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

Bayless Andrew Manning was an American lawyer, law professor, writer and expert of corporate law. He served as the dean of Stanford Law School from 1964 to 1971. He left Stanford in 1971 and became the first president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

#807

Paul M. Smith

#38845

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Paul March Smith is an American attorney who has argued many important cases, most notably Lawrence v. Texas and has argued 21 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. In January 2017, he joined the faculty at Georgetown University Law Center, and also the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., as Vice President of Litigation and Strategy. Until 2017, he was a partner at Jenner & Block's Washington, D.C., office where he served as co-chair of the firm's Election Law and Redistricting practice.

#808

Philip Elman

#20294

Overall Influence

1918 - 1999 (81 years)

Philip Elman was an American lawyer at the United States Department of Justice and former member of the Federal Trade Commission . Elman is best known for writing the government's brief in Brown v. Board of Education. Elman is also notable for being one of just three political independents to have ever served on the FTC.

#809

Stephen McCaffrey

#40306

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Stephen Conolley McCaffrey is an American legal academic. McCaffrey earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado, followed by a Juris Doctor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Dr. Jur. from the University of Cologne He was a professor at the Southwestern University School of Law between 1974 and 1977, when he joined the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. He was appointed Carol Olson Endowed Professor of International Law, and in 2000, became a distinguished professor of law. McCaffrey won the Stockholm Water Prize in 2017, and, the next year...

#810

Sergio Mattarella

#13178

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Sergio Mattarella is an Italian politician, jurist, academic, and lawyer who became President of Italy in 2015. He is the longest-serving president in the history of the Italian Republic. Following Giorgio Napolitano's death in 2023, Mattarella became the only living Italian president.

#811

Türkan Rado

#20395

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

Türkan Rado was a Turkish professor of jurisprudence specializing in Roman law at Istanbul University. She was the first ever female professor of law in Turkey. Biography She was born on 30 October 1915 in Istanbul, then Ottoman Empire. Her father, Cevdet Ferit, was a lawyer and lecturer of criminal procedure at Darülfünun, in what is today Istanbul University; her mother was Ayşe Nikfal. She had two sisters, Şeküre and Gülgün.

#812

David Sive

#27212

Overall Influence

1922 - 2014 (92 years)

David Sive was an American attorney, environmentalist, and professor of environmental law, who has been recognized as a pioneer in the field of United States environmental law. Early life and education Sive was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 22, 1922, the son of Abraham Sive and Rebecca Sive. As a teenager, his growing love for the outdoors and fascination with the American wilderness, as well as his interest in the writings of Thoreau, Emerson, and Wordsworth, led him to a lifelong passion for the natural environment, to wilderness preservation and environmental protection. Hiking...

#813

Herma Hill Kay

#46389

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Herma Hill Kay was the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law . She previously served as dean of Boalt from 1992 to 2000. She specialized in family law and conflict of laws.

#814

Radhika Coomaraswamy

#16160

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict until 13 July 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. She was nominated to the Constitutional Council as a civil representative on 10 September 2015. In 2017, after atrocities against the Rohingya people, she was appointed a Member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.

#815

Asha Rangappa

#33375

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Renuka Asha Rangappa is an American lawyer, former FBI agent, senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. She was previously an associate dean at Yale Law School. She is serving as a senior lecturer at Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Rangappa is also a member of the board of editors of Just Security.

#816

Kari S. Tikka

#16963

Overall Influence

1944 - 2006 (62 years)

Kari Sulo Tikka was a Finnish legal scholar. He was a Professor of Finance Law at the University of Helsinki and one of Finland's leading experts on taxation. Career Kari S. Tikka had a long career in justice education and development of education, both in the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He had also previously worked as chairman of the Finnish Lawyer Union.

#817

Jocelyn Benson

#22408

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Jocelyn Benson is an American democracy advocate, politician, and former academic administrator. Since 2019, she has been the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan. She is a former dean of Wayne State University Law School, a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan, and a board member of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.

#818

Ulrich Sieber

#39039

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ulrich Sieber is a German jurist, law professor, and since October 2003 a director at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He is an honorary professor and faculty member at the law faculties of the University of Freiburg and the University of Munich.

#819

Oliver Lepsius

#46158

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Oliver Lepsius is a German professor of jurisprudence at the University of Münster. His public profile was raised in 2011 by the scandal involving Germany's Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. It was determined that the youthful minister's doctoral dissertation, awarded in 2007, had been over-dependent on plagiarism. The university revoked the doctorate and the minister resigned. In public interviews Oliver Lepsius, the university's professor of jurisprudence expressed his anger very powerfully over the affair.

#820

Lawrence Otis Graham

#9819

Overall Influence

1961 - 2021 (60 years)

Lawrence Otis Graham was an American attorney, political analyst, cultural influencer and celebrated New York Times best-selling author. Early life and education Born on December 25, 1961 to Richard and Betty Graham, the story of the life of Lawrence Otis Graham began rooted in the segregated Jim Crow era of the south, where his Memphis, Tennessee-born parents were raised and his grandparents owned and operated a trucking company.

#821

Chris Hoofnagle

#28816

Overall Influence

Chris Jay Hoofnagle is an American professor at the University of California, Berkeley who teaches information privacy law, computer crime law, regulation of online privacy, internet law, and seminars on new technology. Hoofnagle has contributed to the privacy literature by writing privacy law legal reviews and conducting research on the privacy preferences of Americans. Notably, his research demonstrates that most Americans prefer not to be targeted online for advertising and despite claims to the contrary, young people care about privacy and take actions to protect it. Hoofnagle has written scholarly articles regarding identity theft, consumer privacy, U.S.

#822

Hans-Georg Maaßen

Hans-Georg Maaßen

#9494

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Hans-Georg Maaßen is a German civil servant and lawyer. From 1 August 2012 to 8 November 2018, he served as the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic security agency and one of three agencies in the German Intelligence Community.

#823

Nicole Wong

#22470

Overall Influence

Nicole A. Wong is an American attorney, specializing in Internet, media and intellectual property law. In May 2013, she was selected by the Barack Obama administration to be the White House deputy chief technology officer of the United States. She earned the nickname "the Decider" while she was vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, where she was responsible for arbitrating issues of censorship for Google. Wong stepped down as Deputy US CTO on August 16, 2014, to return with her family to California. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group, a globa...

#824

Joe Thomson

#47286

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Joseph McGeachy Thomson was a Scottish lawyer and academic. He was Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow and a member of the Scottish Law Commission. Early life Thomson was born in Campbeltown and attended the independent Keil School in Dumbarton. He then studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated LLB in 1970 and was awarded the Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize as the outstanding LLB honours graduate.

#825

Kathleen Cleaver

Kathleen Cleaver

#9173

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary. Early life Juette Kathleen Neal was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 13, 1945. Her parents were both activists and college graduates of the University of Michigan. Her father, Ernest Eugene Neal, was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother, Pearl Juette Johnson, earned a master's degree in mathematics. Three years after Cleaver was born, her father accepted a job as the director of th...

#826

J. Duncan M. Derrett

#43133

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

John Duncan Martin Derrett was Professor of Oriental Laws in the University of London, from 1965 to 1982, and afterwards Emeritus Professor. Derrett was educated at Emanuel School, London, Jesus College, Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and was called to the bar by Gray's Inn in 1953. He is the author of a number of works on law and the history of systems of law, India, religion and comparative religion, latterly particularly of comparisons of Christianity with Buddhism. Derrett has also translated works by others into English.

#827

Joyce Vance

#23283

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Joyce Alene White Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.

#828

Sherrilyn Ifill

Sherrilyn Ifill

#23286

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Sherrilyn Ifill is an American lawyer and the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University. She is a law professor and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was the Legal Defense Fund's seventh president since Thurgood Marshall founded the organization in 1940. Ifill is a nationally recognized expert on voting rights and judicial selection. In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list.

#829

Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

#51486

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Michael W. Carroll is a Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University's Washington College of Law. Carroll is one of the founding Board Members of Creative Commons, a not-for-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science PLOS and served on the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Research Data and Information from 2008 to 2013.

#830

Kent A. Jordan

#38071

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Kent Amos Jordan is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was previously a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware from 2002 to 2006.

#831

Liesbeth Zegveld

Liesbeth Zegveld

#35526

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Liesbeth Zegveld is a Dutch lawyer, legal expert and professor. Education and career Zegveld was born in Ridderkerk and grew up on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee in South Holland, the Netherlands. After her law studies at Utrecht University she obtained a doctoral degree cum laude in 2000. She received several awards for her doctoral thesis Accountability of Armed Opposition Groups in International Law.

#832

Joseph D. Kearney

Joseph D. Kearney

#22240

Overall Influence

Joseph Dinneen Kearney is Dean and Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a scholar of civil litigation practice and procedure. Biography Kearney graduated valedictorian at St. Ignatius College Prep and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1986 with a B.A. degree in Classics. He proceeded to Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. His 3L thesis was a study of the recusal of judges in medieval Europe. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals...

#833

Kim Lane Scheppele

Kim Lane Scheppele

#19116

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kim Lane Scheppele is an American scholar of law and politics. She is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

#834

Chidi Odinkalu

#27837

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu was born on June 12, 1968. He is a Nigerian human rights activist, lawyer, professor and writer. He was the former Chairman of Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission and was recently the senior team manager for the Africa Program of Open Society Justice Initiative.

#835

Ronald K. L. Collins

Ronald K. L. Collins

#31826

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ronald Kenneth Leo Collins is the co-founder and co-director of the History Book Festival and co-founder and co-chair of the First Amendment Salons. He served as a law clerk to Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and was a Supreme Court fellow under Chief Justice Warren Burger. He was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law. In 2011, Collins became the book editor for SCOTUSblog. He is the editor of the weekly online blog First Amendment News and editor of Attention . He is also the Lewes Public Library's Distinguished Lecturer.

#836

Lech Gardocki

#36651

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Lech Gardocki is a Polish lawyer, judge and former First President of the Supreme Court of Poland, a position he held from 1998 to 2010. Career He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw in 1966. In 1969 he passed the judicial exam. In 1971 he obtained a doctoral degree in legal sciences, he defended a thesis entitled Service crimes in the legislation of socialist countries. In 1979 he became a habilitated doctor in the field of criminal law based on the work entitled Issues of internationalization of criminal liability for offenses committed abroad.

#837

Kenneth W. Mack

#30048

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Kenneth W. Mack is a historian and the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2000. He is the author of the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, and co-editor of New Black: What Has Changed--and What Has Not--With Race in America.

#838

Andrew Koppelman

#17681

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Andrew Koppelman is the John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and professor of political science at Northwestern University. He is the recipient of the 2015 Walder Award for Research Excellence. The main focus of his research is on the intersection of law and political philosophy.

#839

Daniel Abebe

#26402

Overall Influence

Daniel Y. Abebe is an American lawyer and law professor. Abebe is Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law and Deputy Dean of the University of Chicago Law School and a Vice Provost of the University of Chicago. His research focuses on foreign relations law and public international law.

#840

Ruth Okediji

#31518

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Ruth Lade Okediji is the Jeremiah Smith. Jr, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center. She also founded and serves as faculty director of Harvard Law School's Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies. Professor Okediji is an internationally renowned expert and scholar on intellectual property, trade and development. In 2017 she was appointed as part of the Creative Commons Board.

#841

Stephen S. Hecht

#63127

Overall Influence

#842

F. Lee Bailey

#19790

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Francis Lee Bailey Jr. , better known to the general public as F. Lee Bailey and to his detractors as Flea Bailey , was an American criminal defense attorney. Bailey's name first came to nationwide attention for his involvement in the second murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a surgeon accused of murdering his wife. He later served as the attorney in a number of other high-profile cases, such as Albert DeSalvo, a suspect in the "Boston Strangler" murders, heiress Patty Hearst's trial for bank robberies committed during her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and US Army Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre.

#843

Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts

#12999

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Dorothy E. Roberts is an American sociologist, law professor, and social justice advocate. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes and lectures on gender, race, and class in legal issues. Her focuses include reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. She has published over 80 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvar...

#844

J. Mark Ramseyer

#22842

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

John Mark Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is the author of over 10 books and 50 articles in scholarly journals. He is co-author of one of the leading corporations casebooks, Klein, Ramseyer & Bainbridge, Business Associations, Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs, and Corporations, now in its 10th edition. In 2018 he was awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon in recognition of "his extensive contributions to the development of Japanese studies in the U.S. and the promotion of understanding tow...

#845

Nico Krisch

#38502

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Nico Krisch is a legal scholar, specializing in international law, constitutional theory, and global governance. He is professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Previously, he was research professor at the ICREA, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, and a Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He has also been a professor of international law at the Hertie School, a senior lecturer at the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a research fellow at Merton College , New York University School of Law and the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg.

#846

Fernando Tesón

#31014

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Fernando Tesón is an Argentine-American legal scholar who is known for his contributions to the philosophy of law and to neoclassical liberal theory. He is the Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar at Florida State University College of Law. His publications include Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality ; Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation [with Guido Pincione]; A Philosophy of International Law ; and many articles in law, philosophy, and international relations journals and collections of essays. Before entering academia, Professor Tesón was a career diplomat for the Argentina Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires for four years.

#847

Philip J. Prygoski

#63098

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

Philip Jerome Prygoski was a professor of constitutional law at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Michigan in 1969. He then earned a juris doctor degree at the University of Michigan in 1973. He also held a Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, conferred in 1978, and a master of laws degree from the University of Michigan, conferred in 1983.

#848

David Caron

#43512

Overall Influence

1952 - 2018 (66 years)

David D. Caron was an American attorney who was the dean of the King's College London School of Law, and an emeritus professor of UC Berkeley School of Law. Caron was a Member of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and a Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice. After his death it was said that "at prime, was arguably one of the top two or three arbitrators in the United States and in the world."

#849

Albert Jan van den Berg

#46831

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Albert Jan van den Berg is a founding partner of Hanotiau & van den Berg in Brussels , an Emeritus Professor of Law at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC and at the University of Tsinghua School of Law, Beijing and a member of the Advisory Board and Faculty of the Geneva Master of Laws in International Dispute Settlement , Geneva.

#850

Stephen Gillers

#38846

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Stephen Gillers is a professor at the New York University School of Law. He is often cited as an expert in legal ethics. Biography After graduating from Brooklyn College with a B.A. in 1964, he received his J.D. in 1968 from the New York University School of Law.

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