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,
#1201
Robert W. Hillman
#43640
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Robert W. Hillman is a Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UC Davis School of Law, where he held the Fair Business Practices and Investor Advocacy Chair until his retirement in 2020. He is a scholar in the fields of international business transactions, securities regulation, legal ethics, and corporate and partnership law who has served as a consultant to the World Bank's Chinese University Development Project, as a member of the Advisory Group for the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law of Agency, and a member of the California State Senate's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Shareholder Litigation.
Go to Profile#1202
Hazel Genn
#34984
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Dame Hazel Gillian Genn, DBE, KC , FBA is a leading authority on civil justice whose work has had a major influence on policy-makers around the world, and is a former Dean of the Faculty of Laws and Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at University College London.
Go to Profile#1203
Javaid Rehman
#30382
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Javaid Rehman is a British-Pakistani legal scholar and Professor of Islamic Law and International Law at Brunel University London. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran On 7 July 2018, he was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. On 6 August 2018, Javaid Rehman, wrote to the Iranian Government expressing his interest in visiting Iran. He said he had already received a number of reports raising concerns about alleged violations of human rights in the country. He commenced his duties officially on 13 July 2018.
Go to Profile#1204
Geraldo Brindeiro
#78172
Overall Influence
1948 - 2021 (73 years)
Geraldo Brindeiro was a Brazilian jurist, lawyer, and academic. Brindeiro joined the national Public Prosecutor's Office in 1975. On June 28, 1995, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso appointed him as Prosecutor General of the Republic, the head of the Brazilian Federal Prosecution Office. He was reappointed for three additional terms until his retirement from the office on June 28, 2003, at the end of fourth term.
Go to Profile#1205
Ben Wizner
#19191
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Ben Wizner is an American lawyer, writer, and civil liberties advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union. Since July 2013, he has been the lead attorney of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Education and personal life Wizner was born in 1971 in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up on the campus of Yale University, where his father, Stephen Wizner, is a professor of law at Yale Law School and his mother is a dean. He has described being drawn to social justice work from at least as early as high school; after graduating Harvard College in 1993, he worked for an organization that provided legal assistance to homeless and near-homeless people.
Go to Profile#1206
Carla Anderson Hills
#13393
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Carla Anderson Hills is an American lawyer and a public figure. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 5th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and as the 10th United States Trade Representative under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. Hills was the first woman to hold each of those posts, the third woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet, and the first appointed to both cabinet and cabinet-rank positions. Hills is the earliest-serving living former U.S. Cabinet member.
Go to Profile#1207
Michael Slive
#46504
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
Michael Lawrence Slive was an American attorney and college sports executive. Slive was the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference , a college athletics association, from 2002 until 2015. As part of his role as the SEC Commissioner, he served as the coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series for the 2006 and 2007 regular seasons. He was a member of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee through September 2009 and served as the chairman of the committee for the 2008–09 academic year. He retired as commissioner effective July 31, 2015.
Go to Profile#1208
Song Sang-hyun
#28575
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Song Sang-hyun is a South Korean lawyer and former President of the International Criminal Court . Biography Song attended Seoul National University Law School, graduating with an LL.B. in 1963. He attended Tulane University Law School as a Fulbright Fellow, then obtained a Diploma in Comparative Legal Studies from the University of Cambridge and a J.S.D. from Cornell Law School.
Go to Profile#1209
Bin Cheng
#52813
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Bin Cheng was a Chinese-born British legal scholar. An authority on international air and space law, he served as professor and dean of the University College London Faculty of Laws and honorary president of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law. He was a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and an honorary fellow at UCL. He was named an officier of the Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the French government and awarded the Santos-Dumont Merit Medal by the Brazilian government.
Go to Profile#1210
Denis Moloney
#35807
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Denis Moloney, OBE LLD is a solicitor and notary public from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Born in Belfast in 1954, he was a member of the Council of State in the Republic of Ireland from 2004-2011. Moloney is a senior partner in the leading Belfast law firm of Donnelly & Wall specialising in Criminal Law. He was educated at St Malachy's College and Queen's University, Belfast and was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Laws from the University of Ulster in 2010.
Go to Profile#1211
Gregory S. Alexander
#56853
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Gregory S. Alexander is an American lawyer and author. He currently serves as the A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and is an "internationally renowned expert in property law and theory." He authored several books.
Go to Profile#1212
Frances Olsen
#57969
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Frances Elisabeth Olsen is a professor of law at UCLA and a noted member of the school of Feminist Legal Theory. She teaches Feminist Legal Theory, Dissidence & Law, Family Law, and Torts. Her areas of research interest include legal theory, social change, and feminism.
Go to Profile#1213
Flavia Lattanzi
#49199
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Flavia Lattanzi is an Italian lawyer specialized in international law who is an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia since 2007 and professor at the Roma Tre University. Between 2003 and 2007, she served as an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Go to Profile#1214
Stefan Korioth
#50032
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Stefan Korioth is a German lawyer and professor of public law and ecclesiastical law at LMU Munich. Korioth studied law in Mannheim, Heidelberg and Bonn and completed his Second State Exam in Hamburg. His Ph.D. dissertation on Rudolf Smend's constitutional theory was supervised by Bernhard Schlink. Korioth completed his habilitation thesis on the constitutional framework of fiscal relations and equalization in 1996, and was appointed professor of public law, constitutional history and theory of the state at University of Greifswald. He has held a chair for public law and ecclesiastical law...
Go to Profile#1215
Richard A. Devine
#35795
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Richard A. Devine is an American attorney who served as the Cook County State's Attorney from 1996 to 2008. Early life and education The second of five children, he was the son of a Chicago Water Department employee. Devine grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago, and played football and basketball at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois. He attended John Carroll University for one year on a football scholarship but returned home when his father's health worsened after a stroke. In 1966, Devine graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree before earning a Juris Doctor from ...
Go to Profile#1216
James W. Ely Jr.
#44820
Overall Influence
James W. Ely Jr. is an American historian and legal scholar who serves as the Milton R. Underwood Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor of History Emeritus at Vanderbilt University. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia and his L.L.B. from Harvard University. Ely is a property rights expert, a legal historian, and an author and editor of several books that have received critical acclaim from legal scholars and historians.
Go to Profile#1218
Renaud Dehousse
#42241
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Renaud Dehousse is a Belgian lawyer and professor, born on the 2 June 1960 in Liège, Belgium. He is currently President of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Biography Renaud Dehousse was born in Liège in 1960, the second son of Agnes Denis and Jean-Maurice Dehousse. He became a student of law at the University of Liège and then obtained a doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence. He later took up various positions at the EUI, including professor and head of the Department of Law, before being appointed ordinary professor at the University of Pisa.
Go to Profile#1219
David Kaye
#22029
Overall Influence
1910 - Present (114 years)
David Kaye was the United Nations special rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression between August 2014 and July 2020. He was succeeded by Irene Khan. Kaye is clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine on public international law, international humanitarian law human rights and international criminal justice. He is co-director of the UCI Fair Elections and Free Speech Center working at the intersection of technology, freedom of speech and democratic deliberation. He is also the independent board chair of the Global Netwo...
Go to Profile#1220
Michel Aoun
#16082
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Michel Naim Aoun is a Lebanese politician and former military general who served as the President of Lebanon from 31 October 2016 until 30 October 2022. Born in Haret Hreik to a Maronite Christian family, Aoun joined the Military Academy in 1955 and graduated as an artillery officer in the Lebanese Army. In 1984, he became the youngest Commander of the Army, at the age of 49 years. On 22 September 1988 during the fourth phase of the Lebanese Civil War, the departing President Amine Gemayel appointed him as the interim Prime Minister of a Military Government, after the parliament failed to ele...
Go to Profile#1221
G. Marcus Cole
#41321
Overall Influence
G. Marcus Cole is an American academic who serves as the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at the Notre Dame Law School. He is an expert on the law of bankruptcy, corporate reorganization, and venture capital.
Go to Profile#1222
Eduardo García Máynez
#43669
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Eduardo García Máynez was an academic, jurist and philosopher of Mexican law. He was a member of the National College, managing Director of Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, teacher at National Autonomous University of Mexico, General Secretary and researcher at Instituto de Investigaciones Filosoficas and writer of books on law.
Go to Profile#1223
John Chalmers
#64046
Overall Influence
John Philip Chalmers is an Australian medical researcher, best known for his work in the field of cardiovascular physiology, specifically for his research into hypertension. He is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at both the University of Sydney and Flinders University in Adelaide and a professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Chalmers is also a senior director at the George Institute for Global Health.
Go to Profile#1224
Keir Starmer
#13416
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015. He was previously Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
Go to Profile#1225
Peter Eigen
#17597
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Peter Eigen is a lawyer, development economist and civil society leader. Over a period of 12 years, Eigen founded and chaired Transparency International , a non-governmental organization with National Chapters in over 100 countries. Founded in 1993, TI promotes transparency and accountability in government, business and international development.
Go to Profile#1226
Barbara Olson
#15559
Overall Influence
1955 - 2001 (46 years)
Barbara Kay Olson was an American lawyer and conservative television commentator who worked for CNN, Fox News Channel, and several other outlets. She was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 en route to a taping of Bill Maher's television show Politically Incorrect when it was flown into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks.
Go to Profile#1227
Jonathan B. Wiener
#56390
Overall Influence
Jonathan B. Wiener is the William R. and Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law at Duke Law School, Professor of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment, and Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy, at Duke University. He is a leading scholar of regulation and risk analysis.
Go to Profile#1228
Horst Eidenmüller
#70213
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Horst Eidenmüller is the Freshfields Professor of Commercial Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Hugh's. Eidenmüller was born in Munich, Germany. He is a graduate of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and of Cambridge . Prior to joining Oxford, Eidenmüller held professorships at the universities of Münster and Munich . He was visiting professor at Cambridge , Oxford , Harvard , Tulane , NYU , and Stanford , as well as fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin . Eidenmüller is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanit...
Go to Profile#1229
Robert Weimar
#46893
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Robert Weimar was a German professor of law and psychologist. Weimar was particularly concerned with German and European commercial law, and dealt with the psychological and neuro-scientific fundamentals of thinking and decision-making . His basic scientific position is set out in his work “Psychological Structures of Judicial Decision , which is considered to be a legal psychology classic.
Go to Profile#1230
Rudolf Bernhardt
#53752
Overall Influence
1925 - 2021 (96 years)
Rudolf Bernhardt was a German judge. He represented Germany on the European Court of Human Rights from 1981 to 1998 and served as President of the Court from 24 March to 31 October 1998.
Go to Profile#1231
Thomas Giegerich
#41971
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Thomas Giegerich is a German jurist. He is professor for European law, international law and public law at Saarland University and director of the Europa-Institut, Saarbrücken. Biography Thomas Giegerich studied law at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz from 1978 until 1984. He went to the University of Virginia on a Fulbright scholarship from 1984 to 1985, where he graduated as Master of Laws He returned to Mainz for his "Referendariat" in 1985, working also as an assistant to Eckart Klein, at the Institute for International and European Law. In the summer semester of 1987 he studied ...
Go to Profile#1232
Norman Abrams
#60258
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Norman Abrams is an American academic, and Professor Emeritus at the UCLA School of Law. He succeeded Albert Carnesale on 30 June 2006 as interim-chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles until his permanent replacement, Gene D. Block, took office on 1 August 2007.
Go to Profile#1233
Robert M. Bell
#42943
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Robert Mack Bell is an American lawyer and jurist from Baltimore, Maryland. From 1996 to 2013, he served as Chief Judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals, now known as the Supreme Court of Maryland, the state's highest appellate court. He was the first African American to hold the position.
Go to Profile#1234
Harold L. Moses
#51958
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Harold L. Moses is the Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, Professor of Cancer Biology, Medicine and Pathology, and director emeritus at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He was president of the American Association for Cancer Research in 1991.
Go to Profile#1235
Simon Deakin
#51266
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Simon Deakin is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is regarded as the leading expert in the field of employment law and labour law and is the programme director in the Cambridge Centre for Business Research , as well as an associate Faculty member of the Judge Business School.
Go to Profile#1236
Robert Sharpe
#46247
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Robert James Sharpe, OC, FRSC is a Canadian lawyer, author, academic, and judge. He was dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law from 1990 to 1995 and a judge of the Court of Appeal for Ontario from 1999 to 2020.
Go to Profile#1237
James Lindgren
#40945
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
James Lindgren is a professor of law at Northwestern University. Born in 1952 in Rockford, Illinois, Lindgren graduated from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2009.
Go to Profile#1238
Maeve Kennedy McKean
#8411
Overall Influence
1979 - 2020 (41 years)
Maeve Fahey Kennedy McKean was an American public health official, human rights attorney, and academic. A member of the Kennedy family, she was a daughter of Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and a granddaughter of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Go to Profile#1239
John Armour
#60543
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
John Hamish Armour, is a British legal scholar. Since 2007, he has been Hogan Lovells Professor of Law and Finance at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Previously, he was a lecturer at the University of Nottingham and at the University of Cambridge, where he was also a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#1240
Richard Lazarus
#41973
Overall Influence
Richard J. Lazarus is the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. Early life and education Lazarus graduated from University High School in Urbana, Illinois. He holds a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from Harvard Law School . Prior to his arrival at Georgetown in 1996, Lazarus taught at the Law School at Washington University in St. Louis and the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and worked in the Solicitor General's Office and the Land and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department ...
Go to Profile#1241
Iain Benson
#25429
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Iain Tyrrell Benson is a legal philosopher and practising legal consultant. The main focus of his work in relation to law and society has been to examine some of the various meanings that underlie terms of common but confused usage. His work towards an understanding of secular and secularism has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He has also given critical study to the terms pluralism, faith, believer, unbeliever, liberalism and accommodation and examined the implications for various legal and non-legal usages.
Go to Profile#1242
John Kroger
#53104
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
John Richard Kroger is an American lawyer who served as the president of Reed College. He served as Attorney General for the U.S. state of Oregon from 2009 to 2012. Prior to being elected in 2008, he had earlier served in the Marine Corps, was an Assistant United States Attorney in New York, and a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland. He resigned as Attorney General effective June 29, 2012. On February 9, 2018, he announced that he would be resigning as President of Reed College come the conclusion of the academic year. After leaving Reed in June 2018, Kroger went to teach at Harvard University for the 2018–2019 academic year.
Go to Profile#1243
Geraldine Ferraro
#17664
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an American politician, diplomat, and attorney. She served in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985, and was the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in the 1984 presidential election, running alongside Walter Mondale; this made her the first female vice-presidential nominee representing a major American political party. She was also a journalist, author, and businesswoman.
Go to Profile#1244
Horst Dreier
#27086
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Horst Dreier is a German jurist and legal philosopher. He currently holds a chair at the University of Würzburg. In 2008 he was the initial candidate to replace Winfried Hassemer at the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, but his nomination was opposed by the CDU for his controversial positions regarding torture and stem cell research, and eventually withdrawn in favor of Andreas Voßkuhle.
Go to Profile#1245
Monroe Price
#31257
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Monroe Edwin Price was director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London.
Go to Profile#1246
Linda Greene
#55976
Overall Influence
Linda Sheryl Greene is an American academic in the field of law. She was the first African-American woman to teach at Temple University Law School, and is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Go to Profile#1247
Robert Stephan Cohen
#44251
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Robert Stephan Cohen is an American attorney specializing in divorce cases. He is a senior partner at Cohen Clair Lans Greifer & Simpson LLP, a 21-person family law firm in New York City. Early life Cohen was born on January 14, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York, where his father drove a taxi. He was the first member of his family to graduate from college. Cohen received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Alfred University in 1959 when he was 20 years old and worked three jobs to put himself through Fordham University's School of Law, where he received his J.D. in 1962 and served as a Member of the L...
Go to Profile#1248
Frank Van Dun
#21352
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Frank Van Dun is a Belgian philosopher of law and classical liberal natural law theorist. He is associated with the law faculty of the University of Ghent. In 2013 he was awarded the Prize for Liberty by the Flemish classical-liberal think tank Libera!.
Go to Profile#1249
Adam Redzik
#60864
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Adam Redzik is a Polish lawyer and historian, a professor at the Warsaw University. He specializes in the history of law and science. Selected works Books Wydział Prawa Uniwersytetu Lwowskiego w latach 1939-1946, Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL 2006, Zarys historii samorządu adwokackiego w Polsce, Warszawa: Naczelna Rada Adwokacka 2007, pp. 208; Jakub Honigsman, Zagłada Żydów lwowskich , przekład i opracowanie: Adam Redzik, Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny 2007, pp. 116; Joanna Ostrowska, Tak musiało być. Wspomnienia, opracował Adam Redzik, Warszawa-Łomianki: LTW 2008, pp. 152; Adwoka...
Go to Profile#1250
Christoph Grabenwarter
#44207
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Christoph Grabenwarter is an Austrian legal scholar and professor, currently serving as the President of the Constitutional Court.
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