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,
#101
Koen Lenaerts
#5596
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Koen Lenaerts, Baron Lenaerts is a Belgian jurist and the President of the Court of Justice of the European Union. He is also a Professor of European Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and was a member of the Coudenberg group, a Belgian federalist think tank.
Go to Profile#102
Jay Bybee
#4991
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jay Scott Bybee is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a senior U.S. circuit judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has published numerous articles in law journals and has taught as a senior fellow in constitutional law at William S. Boyd School of Law. His primary research interests are in constitutional and administrative law.
Go to Profile#103
Richard L. Hasen
#5481
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Richard L. Hasen is an American legal scholar and law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an expert in legislation, election law and campaign finance. Early life and education Hasen received his Bachelor of Arts with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. His Bachelor's degree is in Middle Eastern studies. He received his Master of Arts with distinction in political science in 1988 and Doctor of Philosophy in political science in 1992, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Juris Doctor from UCLA School of La...
Go to Profile#104
Robert Cooter
#6139
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Robert D. Cooter is the Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Cooter works in the field of law and economics. He is co-editor of the International Review of Law and Economics, and was among those convened by George Mason University Law School dean, Henry Manne, in January, 1990, to discuss organizing a professional association, prior to formation of the American Law and Economics Association; Cooter was subsequently elected as a founding board member, then served as its president for 1994. In 1999 he was elected to the American Academy of ...
Go to Profile#105
Adrian Vermeule
#7970
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule is an American legal scholar who is currently the Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on constitutional and administrative law, and, since 2016, has voiced support for Catholic integralism. He has articulated this into his theory of common-good constitutionalism.
Go to Profile#106
Henry Manne
#4642
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Henry G. Manne was an American writer and academic, considered a founder of the law and economics discipline. He was Dean Emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Manne held a B.A. in economics from Vanderbilt University , J.D. from the University of Chicago , LLM from Yale University , J.S.D. from Yale University , LL.D. from Seattle University , LL.D. from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala and LLD from George Mason University .
Go to Profile#107
Christopher Greenwood
#7937
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Sir Christopher John Greenwood is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and a former British judge at the International Court of Justice. Prior to his election, he was professor of international law at the London School of Economics and a barrister who regularly appeared as counsel before the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the English courts, and other tribunals.
Go to Profile#108
Bruno Simma
#12215
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Bruno Simma is a German jurist who served as a judge on the International Court of Justice from 2003 until 2012. He served as an affiliated overseas faculty member of the University of Michigan Law School, teaching classes in Ann Arbor until 2021, and as one of the three third-country arbitrators on the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal, to which he was appointed in 2013.
Go to Profile#109
Alan Watson
#11874
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
W. Alan J. Watson was a Scottish legal historian, regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on Roman law, comparative law, legal history, and law and religion. He is credited with coining the term "legal transplants".
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Christopher A. Wray
#1915
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Christopher Asher Wray is an American attorney who is the current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . He was nominated by president Donald Trump on June 7, 2017, and has served since August 2, 2017.
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Vincent Bugliosi
#985
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate–LaBianca murders that took place between August 9 and August 10, 1969.
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Scott J. Shapiro
#7784
Overall Influence
Scott Jonathan Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale Law School and the Director of Yale's Center for Law and Philosophy and of the Yale CyberSecurity Lab. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Columbia College, his J.D. from Yale Law School, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University. He also studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel. After law school, Shapiro served as a clerk for Judge Pierre Leval on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. At Yale, he teaches in Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, and Cybersec...
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Scooter Libby
#1383
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby is an American lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney known for his high-profile indictment and clemency. From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, and Assistant to the President during the administration of President George W. Bush.
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Herbert Wechsler
#10711
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Herbert Wechsler was an American legal scholar and former director of the American Law Institute . He is most widely known for his constitutional law scholarship and for the creation of the Model Penal Code. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Wechsler as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#115
Karl Larenz
#12909
Overall Influence
1903 - 1993 (90 years)
Karl Larenz was a German jurist and philosopher of law. He is known for his influential contributions to German civil law, as well as for being one of the leading Nazi legal theorists in the domain of civil law.
Go to Profile#116
Juliane Kokott
#5693
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Juliane Kokott is the German Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor at the University of St. Gallen. Education Kokott studied law in Bonn and Geneva. Subsequent to her studies, she earned the academic title of Master of Laws at the American University Washington, D.C., while being on a scholarship of the Fulbright Program. There she also worked as an Assistant to Thomas Buergenthal, Judge at the International Court of Justice and former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She worked as a judicial intern at the Landgericht Heidelberg ...
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Harold Hongju Koh
#5379
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Harold Hongju Koh is an American legal scholar who served as the legal adviser of the Department of State in the Obama administration. He was nominated to this position by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2009, and confirmed by the Senate on June 25, 2009. He left the State Department in January 2013, returning to Yale University as a Sterling Professor of international law. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.
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Robert Alexy
#9867
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Robert Alexy is a jurist and a legal philosopher. Alexy studied law and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. He received his J.D. in 1976 with the dissertation A Theory of Legal Argumentation, and he achieved his Habilitation in 1984 with a Theory of Constitutional Rights.
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William P. Alford
#9042
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
William P. Alford is an American legal scholar. He is currently Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is Director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law, and is regarded as an expert in the field of Chinese law.
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Eben Moglen
#2202
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Eben Moglen is an American legal scholar who is professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. Biography Moglen started out as a computer programming language designer and then received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1980. In 1985, he received a Master of Philosophy in history and a JD from Yale University. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Virginia since 1987.
Go to Profile#121
John F. Manning
#9311
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
John F. Manning is an American educator and lawyer. Manning is currently the Morgan and Helen Chu dean and professor of Harvard Law School. Career Manning graduated from Harvard College in 1982 and lived in Thayer Hall during his freshman year. He then graduated from Harvard Law School in 1985. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge Robert Bork at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He then served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia for the Supreme Court's 1988 term. Manning also worked two stints at the Justice Department's Office of...
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Robert Bork
#4347
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Robert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who served as solicitor general of the United States from 1973 until 1977. A professor by training, he was later acting United States Attorney General and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1982 to 1988. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Senate rejected his nomination after a contentious and highly publicized confirmation hearing.
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Harry Woolf, Baron Woolf
#5922
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Harry Kenneth Woolf, Baron Woolf, is a British life peer and retired barrister and judge. He was Master of the Rolls from 1996 until 2000 and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000 until 2005. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made him the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the Courts of England and Wales. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.
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Philippe Sands
#7358
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Philippe Joseph Sands, KC Hon FBA is a British and French writer and lawyer at 11 King's Bench Walk and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in international law, he appears as counsel and advocate before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.
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Manfred Lachs
#10879
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
Manfred Lachs was a Polish diplomat and jurist who served as a Judge of the International Court of Justice and greatly influenced the development of international law after World War II. Life Lachs was born to a Jewish family. Lachs attended the Jagiellonian University in Kraków where he earned a doctorate in Laws . Right after his studies, he started working for the Consular Academy of Vienna and afterwards in the London School of Economics. Lachs was drafted in the army and throughout his military service he was advisor to the Polish government.
Go to Profile#126
Preet Bharara
#1714
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
#127
Jeffrey Rosen
#7849
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Jeffrey Rosen is an American academic and commentator on legal affairs, who is widely published on legal issues and constitutional law. Since 2013, he has served as the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia.
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Raymond Westbrook
#11971
Overall Influence
1946 - 2009 (63 years)
Raymond Westbrook was a scholar of the legal systems of the ancient Near East. He was born in England. Education Westbrook studied law at the University of Oxford, and earned a master's degree in law from the Hebrew University. He studied Assyriology at Yale, and then practised and taught law in England and Wales before finishing his dissertation in 1982 entitled Old Babylonian Marriage Law, for which Yale awarded him the Ph.D.
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Steven M. Wise
#2061
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Steven M. Wise is an American legal scholar who specializes in animal protection issues, primatology, and animal intelligence. He teaches animal rights law at Harvard Law School, Vermont Law School, John Marshall Law School, Lewis & Clark Law School, and Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. He is a former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project. The Yale Law Journal has called him "one of the pistons of the animal rights movement."
Go to Profile#130
Stanley Fish
#612
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist, legal scholar, author and public intellectual. He is currently the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Fish has previously served as the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a professor of law at Florida International University and is dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#131
Luís Roberto Barroso
#11848
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Luís Roberto Barroso is a Brazilian law professor, jurist, Justice and President of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil, having been nominated to the position by President Dilma Rousseff in 2013. Since 25 May 2020, Barroso has also served as President of the Superior Electoral Court.
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William Schabas
#6978
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
William Anthony Schabas, OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty. Schabas has been described as "the world expert on the law of genocide and international law."
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Jonathan Turley
#7462
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
#134
Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond
#6409
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, , is a British judge who served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2017 until her retirement in 2020. In 2004, she joined the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. She is the only woman to have been appointed to that position. She served as a Law Lord until 2009 when she, along with the other Law Lords, transferred to the new Supreme Court as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. She served as Deputy President of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2017.
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Bernardine Dohrn
#1883
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.
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Anna Hazare
#717
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Kisan Baburao "Anna" Hazare is an Indian social activist who led movements to promote rural development, increase government transparency, and investigate and punish corruption in public life. In addition to organising and encouraging grassroots movements, Hazare frequently conducted hunger strikes to further his causes—a tactic reminiscent, to many, of the work of Mahatma Gandhi. Hazare also contributed to the development and structuring of Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Parner taluka of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, India. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan—the third-highest civilian award—...
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Noah Feldman
#5820
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
#138
Pamela S. Karlan
#11271
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Pamela Susan Karlan is an American legal scholar who was the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from February 8, 2021 until July 1, 2022. She is a professor at Stanford Law School. A leading legal scholar on voting rights and constitutional law, she previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2015.
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William Landes
#9274
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
William M. Landes is an American economist who has written about the economic analysis of law and an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which cited him for his work in the field. He is among the most cited law professors in American law reviews. Landes also is the original founder of Lexecon , a legal and economic consulting firm.
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Robert Morgenthau
#2427
Overall Influence
1919 - 2019 (100 years)
Robert Morris Morgenthau was an American lawyer. From 1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York County , having previously served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York throughout much of the 1960s on the appointment of John F. Kennedy. At retirement, Morgenthau was the longest-serving district attorney in the history of the State of New York.
Go to Profile#141
Patrick Atiyah
#12161
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Patrick Selim Atiyah, was an English lawyer and academic. He was best known for his work as a common lawyer, particularly in the law of contract and for advocating reformation or abolition of the law of tort. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1979.
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Orin Kerr
#5264
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Orin Samuel Kerr is an American legal scholar and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. He is known as a scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance. Kerr is one of the contributors to the law-oriented blog titled The Volokh Conspiracy.
Go to Profile#143
William Kunstler
#3062
Overall Influence
1919 - 1995 (76 years)
William Moses Kunstler was an American lawyer and civil rights activist, known for defending the Chicago Seven. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union and the co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights , the "leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country."
Go to Profile#144
Robert Rubin
#471
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Robert Edward Rubin is an American retired banking executive, lawyer, and former government official. He served as the 70th United States Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. Before his government service, he spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, eventually serving as a member of the board and co-chairman from 1990 to 1992.
Go to Profile#145
Kenji Yoshino
#8584
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Kenji Yoshino is a legal scholar and the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. Formerly, he was the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His work involves constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, civil and human rights, as well as law and literature, and Japanese law and society.
Go to Profile#146
Amal Clooney
#3373
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Amal Clooney is a Lebanese and British barrister. Notable clients of hers include former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko, Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad, and the journalists Maria Ressa, and Mohamed Fahmy.
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Yemi Osinbajo
#3812
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Oluyemi Oluleke Osinbajo is a Nigerian lawyer, professor, and politician who served as the 14th vice president of Nigeria from 2015 to 2023. A member of the All Progressives Congress , he previously served as Attorney General of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and holds the title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria. In April 2022, he announced his intention to run for the APC nomination for President of Nigeria in the 2023 presidential election. He was third in the APC presidential primaries held in June 2022 with a total of 235 votes from the delegates.
Go to Profile#148
Frank Easterbrook
#5847
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Frank Hoover Easterbrook is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as a United States circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1985. He was the Seventh Circuit's chief judge from 2006 to 2013.
Go to Profile#149
Robert Ellickson
#7468
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert C. Ellickson is an American property law scholar. He is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School, and was formerly on the faculty at the USC Gould School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Law and Economics Association. Ellickson is the author of numerous books and articles on land use, property, and social norms, and is best known for his 1991 book Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. In that book, a study of ranchers and farmers in Shasta County...
Go to Profile#150
Tom Goldstein
#10788
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Thomas Che Goldstein is an American lawyer. He is known for his advocacy before and blog about the Supreme Court of the United States. He was a founding partner of Goldstein and Howe , a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in Supreme Court litigation, and was, until the end of 2010, a partner at Akin Gump, where he was co-head of the litigation and Supreme Court practices. He retired from Goldstein & Russell in March 2023.
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