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

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List of the most influential people in Law,

#151

James Carville

#1158

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Chester James Carville Jr. is an American political consultant, author, and occasional actor who has strategized for candidates for public office in the United States and in at least 23 nations abroad. A Democrat, he is an expert pundit in U.S. elections who appears frequently on cable news programs, podcasts, and public speeches.

#152

Jules Coleman

#11689

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jules Leslie Coleman is a scholar of law and jurisprudence. He was the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School until 2012. Jules currently is chief academic officer at MYX, a new, hybrid approach to higher education with campuses launching globally beginning in fall 2021. Prior to joining MYX , he most recently served as the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Planning at New York University.

#153

James E. Krier

#10840

Overall Influence

James E. Krier is the Earl Warren DeLano Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. His teaching and research interests are primarily in the fields of property, contracts, and law and economics, and he teaches or has taught courses on contracts, property, trusts and estates, behavioral law and economics, and pollution policy.

#154

Sabino Cassese

#7301

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Sabino Cassese is an Italian jurist, former minister for the public function in the Ciampi government , and judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy . Education and career Justice Emeritus of the Italian Constitutional Court and Emeritus professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He teaches at the Luiss University - School of Government, Rome.

#155

Debra Ann Livingston

#13373

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Debra Ann Livingston is an American lawyer who serves as the Chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Early life and education Livingston was born in Waycross, Georgia, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1980 and a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1984, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

#156

Barbara Aronstein Black

#9344

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Barbara Aronstein Black is an American legal scholar. Born and raised in Brooklyn. She was the first woman to serve as dean of an Ivy League law school. when she became Dean of Columbia Law School in 1986. Black is the George Wellwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia.

#157

Stephen Toope

#3665

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Stephen John Toope is a Canadian legal scholar, academic administrator and a scholar specializing in human rights, public international law and international relations. In November 2022, he was appointed as the fifth President and CEO of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research . Prior to this, he served for five years as the 346th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

#158

Robert Post

#11866

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

#159

Richard Epstein

Richard Epstein

#4543

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Richard Allen Epstein is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University and the director of the Classical Liberal Institute. He also serves as the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

#160

Pamela Samuelson

Pamela Samuelson

#2811

Overall Influence

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman '74 Distinguished Professor of Law and Information Management at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in the UC Berkeley School of Information and Boalt Hall, the School of Law.

#161

Pierre N. Leval

#10618

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Pierre Nelson Leval is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, he was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

#162

Gerhard Casper

#2762

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Gerhard Casper is a political scientist who is a former president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000, a former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1979 to 1987, and a former provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. Casper was president of the American Academy in Berlin from July 2015 through July 2016; from August 2019 to January 24, 2020, he served as the institution's trustee-in-residence.

#163

Lani Guinier

#4842

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated...

#164

Derek Bok

#2338

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Derek Curtis Bok is an American lawyer and educator, and the former president of Harvard University. Life and career Bok was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Following his parents' divorce, he, his mother, brother and sister moved several times, ultimately to Los Angeles, where he spent much of his childhood. He graduated from Stanford University , Harvard Law School , attended Sciences Po, and George Washington University .

#165

Susan Estrich

#4612

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Susan Estrich is an American lawyer, professor, author, political operative, and political commentator. She is known for serving as the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and for serving in 2016 as legal counsel to the former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.

#166

Lyal S. Sunga

#5285

Overall Influence

Lyal S. Sunga is a well-known specialist on international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Career Sunga is a visiting professor in Peace Studies and International Relations and Global Politics at The American University of Rome, visiting professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund University, Sweden, visiting professor at the Strathmore University School of Law in Nairobi, Kenya, and RWI visiting professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He also teaches International Criminal Law, Human Rights,...

#167

Guenter Treitel

#11338

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Sir Guenter Heinz Treitel was a German-born English academic and Vinerian Professor of English Law. Treitel was born in Berlin into a Jewish family, the son of a prominent lawyer, Theodor Treitel, and his wife, Hannah Lilly Levy. In March 1939, he came to England on the Kindertransport together with his older brother, Kurt Max Treitel, and sister Celia. Treitel was once described by Lord Steyn as "one of the most distinguished academic writers on the law of contract in the English speaking world", and has often been described as the leading authority on English contract law. He was the autho...

#168

Akhil Reed Amar

Akhil Reed Amar

#13033

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Akhil Reed Amar is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in constitutional law and criminal procedure. He holds the position of Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, and is an adjunct professor of law at Columbia University. In 2008, a Legal Affairs poll placed Amar among the top 20 contemporary American legal thinkers.

#169

Paul Kirchhof

#6132

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Paul Kirchhof is a German jurist and tax law expert. He is also a professor of law, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and, a former judge in the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany , the highest court in Germany.

#170

Lee Bollinger

#3182

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

#171

Kathleen Sullivan

#9147

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Kathleen Marie Sullivan is an American lawyer and name partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a global, litigation-only law firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Based in the firm's New York City office, Sullivan chairs its national appellate practice group. She is the first and only female name partner at an Am Law 100 law firm. Previously, Sullivan served as dean of Stanford Law School, where she was the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law.

#172

Michael C. Dorf

#12851

Overall Influence

Michael C. Dorf is an American law professor and a scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Professor Dorf has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written or edited three books, including No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century, and Constitutional Law Stories, as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Findlaw.com and a regular contributor to The American Prospect. Dorf is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S.

#173

Roberto Ago

#19314

Overall Influence

1907 - 1995 (88 years)

Roberto Ago was an Italian jurist. He served as a judge on the International Court of Justice from 1979 until 1995. Ago served as Professor of International Law at the Universities of Catania , Genoa , and finally Rome . He specialized in both private and public international law. He gave his first Hague Academy of International Law lecture in 1936 at the age of twenty-eight, on general conflict of laws rules. He also gave lectures at the Hague Academy of International Law in 1939, 1956, 1971, and 1983, on topics ranging from international torts to the Grotian conception of international law.

#174

Paul Finkelman

#5373

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Paul Finkelman is an American legal historian. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books on American legal and constitutional history, slavery, general American history and baseball. In addition, he has authored more than 200 scholarly articles on these and many other subjects. From 2017 - 2022, Finkelman served as the President and Chancellor of Gratz College, Melrose Park, Pennsylvania .

#175

Manfred Nowak

#3448

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Manfred Nowak is an Austrian human rights expert, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice, Italy, Professor of International Human Rights, and Scientific Director of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is also co-founder and former Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and a former judge at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2016, he was appointed Independent Expert leading the ...

#176

Eric Posner

#8470

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

#177

Arthur R. Miller

Arthur R. Miller

#10386

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Arthur Raphael Miller , is a leading scholar in the field of American civil procedure and a University Professor at New York University and Chairman of The NYU Sports & Society Program. Early life and education Miller was born in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Murray Miller, was a lawyer who worked as a solo practitioner, and his mother, Mary, was a legal secretary. He attended college at the University of Rochester, graduating in 1955 with an A.B. with high honors. He then attended the Harvard Law School, where he served as a notes editor for the Harvard Law Review and graduated in 1958 with an LL.B.

#178

Gary L. Francione

Gary L. Francione

#3512

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gary Lawrence Francione is an American academic in the fields of law and philosophy. He is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is also a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Lincoln and honorary professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia . He is the author of numerous books and articles on animal ethics.

#179

William Colby

#1726

Overall Influence

1920 - 1996 (76 years)

William Egan Colby was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973 to January 1976. During World War II, Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency . Before and during the Vietnam War, Colby served as chief of station in Saigon, chief of the CIA's Far East Division, and head of the Civil Operations and Rural Development effort and oversaw the Phoenix Program. After the war, Colby became Director of Central Intelligence and during his tenure, under intense p...

#180

Benny Tai

#7164

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Benny Tai Yiu-ting is a Hong Kong legal scholar, political figure, and democracy activist. He was an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong. From 2013, Tai launched and is known for his initiation of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace, as he considered Hong Kong to lack "true universal suffrage" and should participate in an Occupy movement to win universal suffrage in the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election. His suggestion ultimately resulted in the eruption of the Umbrella Movement the following year, as a result of which he was found guilty of "conspiracy to commi...

#181

Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson

#3136

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Geoffrey Ronald Robertson is an Australian-British barrister, academic, author and broadcaster. Robertson is a founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. He serves as a Master of the Bench at the Middle Temple, a recorder, and visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London.

#182

Georges Vedel

#9332

Overall Influence

1910 - 2002 (92 years)

Georges Vedel was a French public law professor from Auch, France. Biography Vedel is credited as being "the reviser of public law [in France]." He was a faculty member of universities in Poitiers, Toulouse, and Paris, at both Panthéon-Assas University. He was a published author, having written manuals on constitutional and regulatory law, publications which both left their mark on generations of French legal experts. Vedel was most well known for his theory of the constitutional bases present in regulatory law, a theory that united the field of public law in France.

#183

Sarah Cleveland

Sarah Cleveland

#11182

Overall Influence

Sarah Hull Cleveland is an American law professor and expert in international law and the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, with particular interests in the status of international law in U.S. domestic law, international and comparative human rights law, international humanitarian law, and national security. In August 2022, she was selected to run for election as a judge on the International Court of Justice in the 2023 ICJ election. Her nomination to the court has been supported by the National Groups of over 50 states.

#184

Ben Ferencz

#6886

Overall Influence

1920 - 2023 (103 years)

Benjamin Berell Ferencz was an American lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen trial, one of the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials held by US authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. When the Einsatzgruppen reports were discovered, Ferencz pushed for a trial based on their evidence. When confronted with a lack of staff and resources, he personally volunteered to serve as the prosecutor.

#185

Michael K. Young

Michael K. Young

#9710

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Michael Kent Young is an American lawyer and academic administrator. He previously served as president of Texas A&M University from 2015 to 2020, president of the University of Washington from 2011 to 2015, president of the University of Utah from 2004 to 2011, and dean of the George Washington University Law School from 1998 to 2004.

#186

M. Cherif Bassiouni

M. Cherif Bassiouni

#8193

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni was an Egyptian-American emeritus professor of law at DePaul University, where he taught from 1964 to 2012. He served in numerous United Nations positions and served as the consultant to the US Department of State and Justice on many projects. He was a founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University which was established in 1990. He served as president from 1990 to 1997 and then as president emeritus. Bassiouni is often referred to by the media as "the Godfather of International Criminal Law" and a "war crimes expert". As such, he ...

#187

Charles Ogletree

Charles Ogletree

#8508

Overall Influence

1952 - 2023 (71 years)

Charles James Ogletree Jr. was an American legal scholar who served as the Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, where he was the founder of the school's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He was also the author of books on legal topics.

#188

Peter Birks

#11760

Overall Influence

1941 - 2004 (63 years)

Peter Brian Herrenden Birks was the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford from 1989 until his death. He also became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1989, and an honorary Queen's counsel in 1995. He was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is widely credited as having sparked academic enthusiasm for the English law of Restitution, and is often considered to have been one of the greatest English legal scholars of the 20th century.

#189

Nicola Lacey

#11497

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Nicola Mary Lacey, is a British legal scholar who specialises in criminal law. Her research interests include criminal justice, criminal responsibility, and the political economy of punishment. Since 2013, she has been Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics . She was previously Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE , and then Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford .

#190

Lewis Sargentich

Lewis Sargentich

#13561

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Lewis Daniel "Lew" Sargentich , frequently referred to simply as "Sarge", has been a professor at Harvard Law School since 1973 where he teaches courses tort law and jurisprudence. Sargentich is well known for his record as a student at Harvard Law School, where he both named and first analyzed the First Amendment "overbreadth doctrine" in a student note. He graduated summa cum laude.

#191

Richard Delgado

#8397

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Richard Delgado is an American legal scholar considered to be one the founders of critical race theory, along with Derrick Bell. Delgado is currently a Distinguished Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Previously, he was the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He has written and co-authored numerous articles and books, many with his wife, Jean Stefancic. He is also notable for his scholarship on hate speech and for introducing storytelling into legal scholarship.

#192

Mari Matsuda

#12995

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the United States, at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law in 1998 and one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Matsuda returned to Richardson in the fall of 2008. Prior to her return, Matsuda was a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of torts, constitutional law, legal his...

#193

Ann Elizabeth Mayer

#10675

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Biography Ann E. Mayer has taught law courses on subjects comprising law and policy in international business, globalization and human rights, introductions to U.S. law, comparative law, and Islamic law in contemporary Middle Eastern legal systems.

#194

Janusz Kochanowski

Janusz Kochanowski

#10272

Overall Influence

1940 - 2010 (70 years)

Janusz Bogumił Kochanowski was a Polish lawyer, diplomat, and the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection of the Republic of Poland . Life and career Janusz Kochanowski was born in Częstochowa in Poland on 18 April 1940. He was married to a Polish philologist, Ewa and had two children: Marta, a lawyer, and Mateusz, a law student.

#195

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry

#3240

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is a Pakistani jurist who served as the 20th Chief Justice of Pakistan over three non-consecutive terms from 29 June 2005 to 11 December 2013. Chaudhry began practice as an advocate of the Sindh High Court in 1976, before shifting to his native Quetta and later serving as Advocate General of Balochistan, Pakistan. He was elected as president of the Balochistan High Court Bar Association, Quetta in 1986 and was elected twice as member of the Bar Council. He was appointed Advocate General of Balochistan in 1989. He also discharged duties as Banking Judge Special Court for Speedy Trials, Judge Customs Appellate Court as well as Company Judge.

#196

Takeyoshi Kawashima

#23247

Overall Influence

1909 - 1992 (83 years)

Takeyoshi Kawashima was a Japanese jurist. He was a prominent representative of post-war liberalism in Japan and the country's leading legal sociologist. Serving as Sakae Wagatsuma's assistant after 1932, Kawashima was appointed professor of civil law at the University of Tokyo in 1934. In his writings, he sought to develop a system of modern, Western, capitalist society based on the principle of the exchange of goods, which he contrasted to Japanese society with its remaining pre-modern and feudalist elements.

#197

Francisco Rezek

#15457

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

José Francisco Rezek is a Brazilian judge who served as a member of the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, Netherlands, from 1996 to 2006. His surname "Rezek" comes from Lebanon. He earned his LL.B and D.E.S degrees from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and practised as a lawyer for a few years. He then obtained his PhD degree from Paris-Sorbonne University in the 1970s. He followed his academic career on to England, earning a Diploma in Law at Oxford University in 1979 , after undertaking extension courses and research at Harvard University and at The Hague Academy ...

#198

Louis Lusky

#19624

Overall Influence

1915 - 2001 (86 years)

Louis Lusky was an American legal scholar. Considered a pioneer in the field of civil rights law, he was the Betts Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he taught from 1963 to 1986. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Lusky graduated from Louisville Male High School in 1931. He later attended the University of Louisville and Columbia Law School and graduated as the highest-ranking member of the Columbia Law School Class of 1937. Lusky began his legal career as the clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone. During that time he helped draft the famous "Footnote 4" of United States v.

#199

Ian Brownlie

#15216

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Sir Ian Brownlie, was an English barrister and academic, specialising in international law. He was Chichele Professor of Public International Law from 1980 to 1999. Early life and education Brownlie was born in Bootle, Liverpool; his father worked for an insurance company. He was evacuated during the Second World War to Heswell, near Wirral, going a year without any formal education after the local school was bombed. He attended Alsop High School. He then attended Hertford College, Oxford as a Gibbs Scholar in 1952 and received a first-class BA in law in 1953. Speaking of this time, C H S Fifoot described Brownlie his "ablest student".

#200

Holm Putzke

#13959

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Holm Putzke is a professor for criminal law at the University of Passau, Germany. Education and career Putzke studied law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bochum and passed the First State Examination in Law 1997, followed by the Second State Examination in Law in 2002. In 2003 he received the PhD in law and 2009 the Master of Laws at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków/Poland. From 2002 until 2003 he was a graduate teaching assistant at the chair of criminal law, criminal procedure law and general legal philosophy at the Faculty of Law, University of Bochum and from 2003 until...

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