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.

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List of the most influential people in Law,

#1701

Caroline D. Krass

Caroline D. Krass

#67315

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Caroline Diane Krass is an American attorney and government official who currently serves as the General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Krass was a partner at the Washington office of the Los Angeles-based law firm Gibson Dunn . She served as General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency from 2014 to 2017, and prior to that as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and briefly as the Acting Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. She has also been a lawyer in the State Department, the Treasury Department, United...

#1702

Michael Waldman

Michael Waldman

#47405

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Michael A. Waldman is an American attorney and presidential speechwriter and political advisor, currently serving as the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonprofit law and policy institute. Waldman has led the center since 2005.

#1703

Paul Smith

#4902

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Sir Paul Brierley Smith is a British fashion designer. His reputation is founded on his designs for men's clothing, but his business has expanded into other areas as well. Smith was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1991.

#1704

Claus-Wilhelm Canaris

#81866

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Claus-Wilhelm Canaris was a German jurist. Until his retirement in 2005 he was professor of Private Law, Commercial law and Labour law the University of Munich. Life Canaris was born in Liegnitz, Germany. His father was Constantin Canaris. Canaris went to school in Königsberg, Miesbach and Düsseldorf. He studied law, philosophy and Germanistics in Paris, Geneva and Munich, where he passed the first state exam in 1961. He became scientific assistant of Karl Larenz at the University of Munich and graduated with the dissertation Die Feststellung von Lücken im Gesetz in 1964 . He habilitated in Munich in 1967 .

#1705

Mark Weiner

#54135

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Mark S. Weiner is an American writer, documentary filmmaker, and legal historian. He retains the position of professor of law at Rutgers University School of Law—Newark, where he teaches constitutional law and legal history, though he turned to a full-time writing career in 2012 and stopped actively teaching at the school. He blogs at his website Worlds of Law.

#1706

Catherine Sandoval

#48734

Overall Influence

Catherine Janet Kissee Sandoval is a former commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission. Sandoval is a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. , she has served as a member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. In 1984, she was the first Latina Rhodes scholar.

#1707

Ron Christie

#23389

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Ronald Irvin Christie is an American government relations expert and Republican political strategist, who has also worked as a member of former Vice President Dick Cheney's staff. He is the author of two books, and an occasional guest on various cable news programs. He serves as an adjunct professor at Cornell University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Haverford College. He is currently the CEO of Christie Strategies, a communications and issue management firm that he founded in Alexandria, Virginia.

#1708

Amalia Kessler

#80086

Overall Influence

Amalia D. Kessler is the Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies and Professor of History at Stanford University and is currently serving as the law school's Associate Dean for Advanced Degree Programs. Her research focuses on law, markets, and dispute resolution in France and the United States from the early modern period through to the twentieth century. Among her publications are the award-winning books A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France and Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877.

#1709

Jeff Wrana

#99299

Overall Influence

Jeffrey L. Wrana is a Canadian cancer researcher. He is the CIBC Breast Cancer Research Scientist and Mary Janigan Research Chair in Molecular Cancer Therapeutic at Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Toronto . As a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical Genetics and Microbiology at U of T, Wrana was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

#1710

Catherine Dauvergne

Catherine Dauvergne

#64978

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Catherine Dauvergne was a former Vice-President, Academic and Provost of Simon Fraser University. Previously, she was Dean of the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia from 2015 to 2020, and prior to this Dauvergne researched refugee, immigration, and citizenship law as a professor.

#1711

Becca Heller

#36999

Overall Influence

Rebecca Heller is a lawyer specializing in human rights. She is known for her opposition to the Trump travel ban, and for her work providing legal assistance to refugees through the International Refugee Assistance Project, which she co-founded and directs.

#1712

Marc Weller

#68480

Overall Influence

Marc Weller is Professor of International Law and International Constitutional Studies at Cambridge University, England, and a fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge working in its Department of Politics and International Studies . He was the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. He has been an adviser in many international peace negotiations.

#1713

Chibli Mallat

#42900

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Chibli Mallat is a Lebanese international lawyer, legal scholar, and a former candidate for presidency in Lebanon. Career Lawyer and law professor In his law practice, he is best known for bringing the case of Victims of Sabra and Shatila v. Ariel Sharon et al., under the law of universal jurisdiction in Belgium, where his clients won a judgment on 12 February 2003 against the accused before a change in Belgian law removed the jurisdiction of the court. Other cases he pursued included one against Saddam Hussein, who was the object of an international campaign initiated in 1995 by Mallat with...

#1714

Hossein Modarressi

#53952

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Hossein Modarressi Tabataba'i is a leading Muslim jurist and professor of law. Early life He attended the Islamic seminary at Qom where he received a complete traditional Islamic education in Islamic philosophy, theology and law, ending with a certificate of ijtihad, the highest degree in Islamic religious tradition. He also taught there for many years before pursuing his secular education which ended in 1982 with a D. Phil. from Oxford University. He has been a professor at Princeton University since 1983 where he is Bayard Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies. He has simultaneously been ...

#1715

Arie Reich

#36171

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Arie Reich is an Israeli legal scholar specializing in international trade law and European Union Law. He is a full professor at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, and serves as the Vice Rector of the university. He previously served as the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Dean of students.

#1716

Steven Gey

#63052

Overall Influence

1956 - 2011 (55 years)

Steven G. Gey was an American legal academic and one of the leading U.S. scholars on religious liberties and free speech. Early life and education Gey was born and raised in Pensacola, Florida. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Eckerd College in 1978 and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School in 1982. As a law student, he worked as the articles editor of the Columbia Law Review.

#1717

J. Robert Brown Jr.

#33263

Overall Influence

Jay Brown is a law professor with specializations in corporations and corporate governance, business law, administrative law, and securities regulation. He currently teaches at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

#1718

John L. Hagan

#78115

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

John L. Hagan is an American sociologist focusing on criminology. He is currently the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and University Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology at University of Toronto and also formerly the Dahlstrom Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Law at University of North Carolina .

#1719

K. Sabeel Rahman

#37723

Overall Influence

K. Sabeel Rahman is an American legal scholar, author, and policy advisor, and currently Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He formerly lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Biden administration from 2021-2023. He joined the Biden Administration from Demos, a liberal think tank he served as president of from 2018 to 2021.

#1720

Julie Maxton

#42981

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Dame Julie Katharine Maxton is a British-New Zealand barrister, legal scholar, and academic administrator. Since 2011, she has been executive director of the Royal Society. She spent most of her career working at the University of Auckland, where she rose to be Dean of its Faculty of Law. From 2006 to 2010, she was Registrar of the University of Oxford.

#1721

Pamela Pereira

#78487

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Pamela Pereira Fernández is a Chilean lawyer, noted for having defended, in numerous cases, victims of human rights violations committed during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet . Education Pereira studied Law at the University of Chile and has been a professor of legal clinics at the Faculty of Law of the same university , and of criminal law at the Andrés Bello University. She formed the Roundtable on Human Rights between 1999 and 2000. She is currently a member of the Court Unit of the Public Criminal Defense Service of Chile.

#1722

Charles W. Blackwell

#37058

Overall Influence

1942 - 2013 (71 years)

Charles W. Blackwell was an American lawyer, educator, activist, and diplomat, who served as the first Ambassador of the Chickasaw Nation to the United States of America, from 1995 until his death in 2013. Blackwell was the first Ambassador of any Native American tribal government to the government of the United States. From 1990 to 1995, he had served as the Chickasaw Nation delegate to the US Congress, while also working on issues of health, education, and economic development for tribal nations.

#1723

John Pfaff

#40982

Overall Influence

John F. Pfaff is an American law professor at Fordham University. He previously served as a John M. Olin Fellow at the Northwestern University School of Law and as a clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was educated at the University of Chicago. His 2017 book Locked In argues that conventional wisdom regarding the causes of high rates of incarceration in the United States is wrong, arguing that, for example, the war on drugs has played a much smaller role than generally thought. Instead, he argues that rising violent...

#1724

Shawn Bayern

#56559

Overall Influence

Shawn J. Bayern is an American law professor. Before his legal career, he created several widely used computer-software systems and wrote several widely cited books on computer programming. Biography After graduating from Yale University, Bayern worked as a researcher at Yale University's Technology and Planning group, there developing the Central Authentication Service.

#1725

W. Michael Gillette

W. Michael Gillette

#81917

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

W. Michael Gillette is an American attorney and retired judge in the state of Oregon. He was a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, where he served from 1986 until 2010. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was previously a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals from 1977 to 1986.

#1726

Kapil Sibal

#32876

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Kapil Sibal is an Indian lawyer and politician. A designated Senior Advocate, he has represented several high-profile cases in the Supreme Court of India and is widely regarded as one of the famous lawyers of India. He is a Member of Parliament, in Rajya Sabha.

#1727

Stephen J. Morse

#47138

Overall Influence

Stephen J. Morse is the Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also holds the position professor of psychology and law in psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and is the associate director of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania.

#1728

John B. Quigley

#73896

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

John B. Quigley is a professor of law at the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, where he is the Presidents' Club Professor of Law. In 1995 he was recipient of the Ohio State University Distinguished Scholar Award. Born John Bernard Quigley Jr., he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and educated at the St. Louis Country Day School. He graduated from Harvard in the class of 1962, later taking an LL.B degree from Harvard Law School in 1966 and an M.A., also awarded in 1966. He was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts in 1967. Before joining the Ohio State faculty in 1969, he was...

#1729

Harry Hobbs

#66677

Overall Influence

Harry Hobbs is an Australian lawyer and legal academic who specialises in Australian constitutional law. An associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Technology Sydney, Hobbs has published numerous works regarding the legal rights of Aboriginal Australians within Australia, micronations, and secessionism in Australia. He has collaborated with lawyer George Williams on several occasions.

#1730

William G. Otis

#83432

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

William "Bill" G. Otis is an adjunct law professor and former federal prosecutor who served as Special Counsel to President George H. W. Bush. Education and legal career A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Stanford Law School , Otis is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He also contributes to the legal blog Crime and Consequences.

#1731

Matthew W. Finkin

#94318

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Matthew W. Finkin is one of the leading labor law scholars in the United States. He co-authors the foundational textbook Labor Law: Cases and Materials and is co-editor of the international journal, the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal.

#1732

David Post

#71128

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David G. Post is an American legal scholar. Post is an expert in intellectual property law and cyberspace law. Until his retirement in 2014, Post served as Professor of Law at Beasley School of Law of Temple University in Philadelphia.

#1733

Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea

Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea

#49214

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Arturo Fernando Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea is a Mexican lawyer who has been a member of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation since December 2009. Zaldívar served as President of the Court from 2 January 2019, to 1 January 2023.

#1734

Stephen Lee

#35314

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Stephen Bernard Lee is a South African former political prisoner best known for his 1979 escape from Pretoria Local Prison with friend and fellow activist Tim Jenkin and a third inmate, Alex Moumbaris.

#1735

Gerry Maher

#86674

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Gerard 'Gerry' Maher KC was a Scottish lawyer and academic. He was a Law Commissioner at the Scottish Law Commission from 2000 to 2008, Professor of Criminal Law at Strathclyde Law School from 1992 to 2000, and a Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Edinburgh.

#1736

Philip Jeyaretnam

Philip Jeyaretnam

#43030

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Philip Antony Jeyaretnam is a Singaporean judge, lawyer and author who has been serving as a Judge of the High Court of Singapore since 1 November 2021, having been first appointed to the Bench as a Judicial Commissioner on 4 January 2021. He has served as President of the Singapore International Commercial Court since 2 January 2023. Prior to his appointment to the Bench, he served as ASEAN chief executive officer and global vice-chair at Dentons. He also served as president of the Law Society of Singapore between 2004 and 2007. Jeyaretnam was also one of the youngest lawyers to be appointe...

#1737

Jane McAdam

#61338

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Jane Alexandra McAdam is an Australian legal scholar, and expert in climate change and refugees. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of NSW, and is the inaugural Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She was awarded an Order of Australia in 2021 for “distinguished service to international refugee law, particularly to climate change”.

#1738

Grant S. Nelson

#67411

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Grant S. Nelson is the William H. Rehnquist Professor of Law, at Pepperdine University. A leading scholar of real estate law, Nelson was previously professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was "Professor of the Year" three times at UCLA and won the Rutter Award. He has published extensively on the topic of real estate transactions. He served as a co-reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Property. He taught at the University of Missouri School of Law for 24 years.

#1739

Giorgio Malinverni

#56065

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Giorgio Malinverni is a Swiss law professor. On 27 June 2006, he was elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as the judge in respect of Switzerland on the European Court of Human Rights. He holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

#1740

Wayne Logan

#82671

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Wayne A. Logan is the Steven M. Goldstein Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law. Logan teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and sentencing. He is the author or co-author of several books, including The Ex Post Facto Clause: Its History and Role in a Punitive Society , Sentencing Law, Policy, and Practice , and Knowledge as Power: A History of Criminal Registration Laws in America . He is also the author of several dozen book chapters and law review articles, with work appearing in such publications as the Georgetown Law Journal, the Michig...

#1741

Theodore Ruger

#85432

Overall Influence

Theodore W. Ruger is an American legal scholar specializing in constitutional law, judicial authority, health law, and the regulation of therapeutic goods. He is the Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law and dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

#1742

Eva Paterson

#57071

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Eva Jefferson Paterson is the president and founder of the Equal Justice Society, a national legal organization focused on civil rights and anti-discrimination. Biography Early life and education Eva Paterson grew up in a military family in France, England, and Mascoutah, in southern Illinois. In high school, she traveled the state giving Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech.” She completed her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, where she was the school's first African American student government president.

#1743

Brian Slattery

#18870

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Brian Slattery, B.A., BCL, D.Phil., F.R.S.C., is a Professor Emeritus of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a prominent academic in Canadian Constitutional Law and Aboriginal rights discourse. He practices Aboriginal law at Slattery & Slattery.

#1744

Kevin Smith

#11714

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Kevin Patrick Smith is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor and comic book writer. He came to prominence with the low-budget comedy buddy film Clerks , which he wrote, directed, co-produced, and acted in as the character Silent Bob of stoner duo Jay and Silent Bob, characters who also appeared in Smith's later films Mallrats , Chasing Amy , Dogma , Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back , Clerks II , Jay and Silent Bob Reboot , and Clerks III which are set primarily in his home state of New Jersey. While not strictly sequential, the films have crossover plot elements, character refere...

#1745

David Pearl

#77338

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

David Stephen Pearl is a British lawyer and member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. He is the son of Rabbi Chaim Pearl. Pearl was educated at the University of Birmingham and at Queens' College, Cambridge prior to being called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1968. He then lectured in law at the University of Cambridge, where he was a fellow of Fitzwilliam College and wrote the first comprehensive textbook of Muslim law for British students. He later served as dean of law at the University of East Anglia. He became the chief adjudicator of immigration appeals in 1994, and then president of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal in 1997.

#1746

Ronald St. John Macdonald

#50973

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Ronald St. John Macdonald, was a Canadian legal academic and jurist. Early life and education Born in Montreal, the son of R. St. John Macdonald and Elizabeth Smith, he served as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. When he returned to Canada he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949 from St. Francis Xavier University, a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1952 from Dalhousie Law School, and two Master of Laws degrees, from the University of London in 1954, and from Harvard Law School in 1955.

#1747

Irving Kirsch

#6525

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Irving Kirsch is an American psychologist and academic. He is the Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also professor emeritus of psychology at the Universities of Hull and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and the University of Connecticut in the United States. Kirsch is a leading researcher within the field of placebo studies who is noted for his work on placebo effects, antidepressants, expectancy, and hypnosis. He is the originator of response expectancy theory, and his...

#1748

Mark Henaghan

#82636

Overall Influence

Raymond Mark Henaghan is a Law Professor at the University of Auckland. He is also the former Dean of the University of Otago Faculty of Law in Dunedin, New Zealand up until April 2018. His research interests include family law, especially law relating to children, law regarding the human genome, and judiciary law.

#1749

Kirsten Sandberg

#67155

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Kirsten Sandberg is a Norwegian jurist and expert on the rights of children. She has served as Acting Supreme Court Justice in Norway, and has performed as chair of the Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

#1750

Charles Gardner Geyh

Charles Gardner Geyh

#71083

Overall Influence

Charles Gardner Geyh is the John F. Kimberling Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana. His research centers on judicial conduct, ethics, procedure, independence, and administration, and he has testified as an expert in several cases involving judicial impeachment. In addition, he is quoted frequently in the national media for his expertise in judicial misconduct, conflicts of interest, and the separation of powers.

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