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.

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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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List of the most influential people in Law,

#1751

Ed Morgan

#57553

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Edward M. Morgan is a Canadian jurist. He was a lawyer in private practice and taught international law at the University of Toronto until he was appointed as a trial judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2012.

#1752

Frank S. Alexander

#79451

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Frank Spruill Alexander is an American legal scholar, serving as the Sam Nunn Professor of Law at the Emory University School of Law. He is also General Counsel for Center for Community Progress. Early life and education Alexander was born in 1952. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from University of North Carolina in 1973 and later received his Juris Doctor and Master of Theological Studies degrees from Harvard University in 1978.

#1753

Doron Menashe

#47859

Overall Influence

Doron Menashe, J.S.D is an associate professor of law, in the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa, Editor-in-Chief of Haifa Law Review, one of the leading law reviews in Israel, Mediator and Arbitrator in the Institute of Commercial Arbitration and head of the master's program in adjudication and criminal procedure. He is also a member of the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence.

#1754

Alberto van Klaveren

#45808

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Albert Leo van Klaveren Stork is a Dutch-born Chilean lawyer, political scientist, and diplomat who has been serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 10 March 2023. Previously, he served as the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs of Chile between 2006 and 2009. Van Klaveren also represented Chile in the International Court of Justice in the case regarding the Chilean–Peruvian maritime dispute. Before assuming his post as a minister, he taught at the University of Chile.

#1755

Gráinne de Búrca

#77526

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Gráinne de Búrca, is an Irish legal scholar, specialising in European Union law. Since 2011, she has been Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. From 1990 to 2000, she was a lecturer at University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She was then Professor of Law at the European University Institute, Fordham University School of Law, and Harvard Law School, before joining New York University.

#1756

Julia Black

#46883

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Julia Mary Black is the strategic director of innovation and a professor of law at the London School of Economics and Political Science . She was the interim director of the LSE, a post she held from September 2016 until September 2017, at which time Minouche Shafik took over the directorship. She is the president of the British Academy, the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences, and became the academy's second female president in July 2021 for a four-year term.

#1757

Bob Menendez

#28351

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robert Menendez is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2006. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Jon Corzine, and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015, and again from 2021 to 2023.

#1758

Joseph P. Liu

#81600

Overall Influence

Joseph P. Liu is an American legal scholar working as a professor at the Boston College Law School. He has published a number of papers and articles on the subjects of intellectual property law, law and the internet, and internet regulation.

#1759

Alta Charo

#30004

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Robin Alta Charo is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a leading American authority on bioethics. She held appointments in both Wisconsin's law school and medical school.

#1760

Sven Spengemann

#32743

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Sven Michael Spengemann is a German-Canadian lawyer, bureaucrat and politician, who was elected to represent the electoral district of Mississauga—Lakeshore in the House of Commons of Canada in the 2015 federal election.

#1761

Joanna M. Shepherd

#78313

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Joanna Mehlhop Shepherd-Bailey is an American legal scholar and economist. Shepherd earned a Bachelor of Business Administration at Baylor University in 1997, and completed a juris doctor degree in law and a PhD in economics at Emory University in 2002. She began teaching at Clemson University, returning to Emory as a faculty member in 2005. A 2016 analysis by Gregory Sisk considered Shepherd a highly cited legal scholar. In December 2019, Shepherd was named the Thomas Simmons Professor of Law.

#1762

Jelili Adebisi Omotola

#58204

Overall Influence

1941 - 2006 (65 years)

Jelili Adebisi Omotola was a Nigerian professor of Property Law, Senior Advocate of Nigeria , educational administrator and former vice chancellor of the University of Lagos. Education In 1961, he obtained his first school leaving certificate, West African School Certificate . In 1966, he received the University of London Merit Award in English Law and Criminal Law. in 1967 he obtained his LLB at the University of London and in 1971, he achieved the Doctor of philosophy degree in Law from the same university.

#1763

Paul Steven Miller

Paul Steven Miller

#57321

Overall Influence

1961 - 2010 (49 years)

Paul Steven Miller was the Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. He was a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for almost 10 years, and in 2009 he was chosen to serve as a special assistant to President Barack Obama. Miller, who had the genetic condition achondroplasia was tall. He was known as a leader in the disability rights movement, and an expert on anti-discrimination law and international disability rights.

#1764

Chris William Sanchirico

#48962

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Chris William Sanchirico is the Samuel A. Blank Professor of Law, Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the Wharton School . He is an expert on tax law and policy.

#1765

Josh Hawley

#38752

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Joshua David Hawley is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Missouri, a seat he has held since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election.

#1766

Jonathan F. Mitchell

#79088

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Jonathan F. Mitchell is an American attorney, academic, and former government official. From 2010 to 2015, he was the Solicitor General of Texas. He has argued five cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He has served on the faculties of Stanford Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, the George Mason University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. In 2018, he opened a private solo legal practice in Austin, Texas.

#1767

Betsey Johnson

#7605

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Betsey Johnson , is an American fashion designer best known for her feminine and whimsical designs. Many of her designs are considered "over the top" and embellished. She also is known for doing a cartwheel ending in a split at the end of her fashion shows.

#1768

Alvaro Pires

#101872

Overall Influence

Alvaro Pires is a Canadian law professor, currently a Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Legal Traditions and Penal Rationality at University of Ottawa.

#1769

Karen Engle

#77744

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Karen Engle is the Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and Founder and Co-director of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law. She is also an affiliated faculty member of Latin American Studies and of Women's and Gender Studies. She teaches courses and specialized seminars in public international law, international human rights law, and legal theory.

#1770

W. Taylor Reveley III

W. Taylor Reveley III

#35405

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Walter Taylor Reveley III is an American legal scholar and former lawyer. He served as the twenty-seventh president of the College of William & Mary. Formerly Dean of its law school from August 1998 to February 2008, Reveley was appointed interim president of William & Mary on February 12, 2008, following Gene Nichol's resignation earlier that day, and was elected the university's 27th president by the Board of Visitors on September 5, 2008. While president, Reveley continued his service as the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence at the law school.

#1771

Arthur M. Dula

#49470

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Arthur M. Dula is a space lawyer, a patent attorney, the literary executor for major science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and chairman, founder of the private spaceflight company, Excalibur Almaz.

#1772

Andreas Fischer-Lescano

#74063

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Andreas Fischer-Lescano is a German legal scholar. He had a professorship at the University of Bremen from 2008 to 2022, where his research interests included public law, European law, international law, legal theory, and legal policy. He relocated to the University of Kassel in 2022 and assumed the chair in Transitional Justice.

#1773

Mahmoud Shehabi Khorassani

#36058

Overall Influence

Mahmoud Shehabi Khorassani . was a lawyer, philosopher, jurist, and a professor emeritus at the University of Tehran in the Pahlavi dynasty era. He was well versed in diverse fields such as logic, doctrine of jurisprudence, philosophy, poetry, literature, and spirituality.

#1774

John McKay

#51956

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

John Larkin McKay is a former United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. Background McKay, a member of a prominent Republican family in the state, attended Seattle Preparatory School and the University of Washington, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1978. After working as an aide to Congressman Joel Pritchard in 1978–79, McKay earned his J.D. degree at Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska in 1982.

#1775

Michel Chrétien

#44222

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Michel Chrétien is a Canadian medical researcher specializing in neuroendocrinology research at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal, or Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, . He is a younger brother of former Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien.

#1776

Louis Loss

#64692

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Louis Loss was an American legal scholar. He was considered to be the intellectual father of modern securities law. He served as the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School. He is best known for his treatise Securities Regulation, which is still considered to be the definitive authority on the subject and which has been cited over 50 times by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with having coined the word tippee, to refer to someone who trades stock after getting a tip from a corporate insider.

#1777

Piotr Waglowski

Piotr Waglowski

#56919

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Piotr Waglowski , known online as VaGla, is a Polish lawyer, poet, publicist and webmaster, open government activist, researcher of communication processes in the paradigm of social constructionism. Academic activity and teaching Waglowski specialised in the legal aspects of the information society and the legal analysis of the Internet-based projects. A graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, he dedicated his Master's thesis to the subject of infringement of personality rights on the Internet and their civil law protection based on the Civil Code. He studied a...

#1778

Axel Kaiser

#36236

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Axel Phillip Kaiser Barents-Von Hohenhagen is a Chilean writer, lawyer and political scientist. A Mont Pelerin Society member, he has collaborated as a columnist for El Mercurio, El Líbero and Diario Financiero. In 2013 and 2014 he published two articles in Forbes: "Is this the end of the Chilean economic miracle?" and "Michelle Bachelet is destroying Chile's free market institutions". Some critics argued about the latter that Kaiser was overstating the impact of Michelle Bachelet's reforms.

#1779

Kornelia Polyak

#82055

Overall Influence

Kornelia Polyak is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized breast cancer expert. Polyak earned her MD from Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Medical University in Szeged, Hungary, and her PhD from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences/Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She then did a fellowship in cancer genetics at Johns Hopkins Oncology Center with Bert Vogelstein and Kenneth Kinzler.

#1780

Atsushi Yamaguchi

#95760

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Atsushi Yamaguchi is a Japanese lawyer and academic who has served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Japan since 2017. Education and Career Yamaguchi was born on November 6, 1953, in Japan. He attended the University of Tokyo and graduated with a degree in law in 1976. In 1979 he began teaching law at that university as an associate professor. He was granted the status of full professor in 1992. In 1994 he joined the Criminal Law Society of Japan and became its director in 2009. In 2012 he became the director of the National Bar Examination Commission. In 2014 Yamaguchi became E...

#1781

Roger Wilkins

#16483

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Roger Wood Wilkins was an American lawyer, civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist who served as the 15th United States Assistant Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.

#1782

Joseph Goldstein

#61319

Overall Influence

1923 - 2000 (77 years)

Joseph Goldstein was an American legal scholar. Goldstein was a Jew, and spoke Yiddish. A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, he earned a bachelor of arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1943. Goldstein served in the United States Army during the later years of World War II, then enrolled at Yale Law School. Goldstein left Yale after his first year of legal studies to pursue a doctorate from the London School of Economics, which was funded by a Fulbright Scholarship between 1949 and 1950. Goldstein obtained his bachelor's of law degree from Yale in 1952. As a student he served as an editor...

#1783

Allen Weiner

#69803

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Allen S. Weiner is an American academic who is a senior lecturer in international law at Stanford Law School. Weiner is also the co-director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He was formerly a Stanford Professor of International Law. He also teaches for undergraduates, working with Scott Sagan on the popular "Face of Battle" and "Rules of War" courses, which introduce topics of military history and the law of armed conflict.

#1784

James Rubin

#13165

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

James Phillip Rubin is an American former diplomat and journalist who served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Clinton Administration from 1997–2000. He wrote a regular column on foreign affairs for The Sunday Times of London, and is currently Diplomatic Counselor to the newly elected Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .

#1785

Paul Holdengräber

#24946

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Paul Bernard Holdengräber is an American interviewer, curator, and writer. He was director of the New York Public Library's public programming and organized literary conversations for the NYPL's public program series, LIVE from the NYPL, which he founded.

#1786

Arthur Kramer

#32306

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Arthur Kramer was the founding partner of law firm Kramer Levin. Family Kramer's relationship with his brother, playwright Larry Kramer, moved into the public sphere with Larry's 1984 play, The Normal Heart. In the play, Larry portrays Arthur as more concerned with building his $2 million house in Connecticut than in helping his brother's cause. Humorist Calvin Trillin, a friend of both Larry and Arthur, once called The Normal Heart "the play about the building of [Arthur's] house." Anemona Hartocollis observed in The New York Times that "their story came to define an era for hundreds of th...

#1787

Rachel Moran

#66653

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Rachel F. Moran is an American lawyer who is currently a Distinguished Professor at UC Irvine School of Law. She was previously the Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She served as Dean of the UCLA School of Law from 2010 to 2015, and was a faculty member at UC Irvine School of Law from 2008 to 2010, and at UC Berkeley School of Law from 1983 to 2008.

#1788

Colin Crawford

#88373

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Colin Crawford is an American academic and the 24th dean of the University of Louisville School of Law. Crawford will be the 16th dean of Golden Gate University School of Law, effective summer 2021.

#1789

Alfons Bürge

#87216

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Alfons Bürge is a Swiss scholar of Ancient Law, with a special interest in the comparative study of Ancient and Modern Law. Born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1947, Bürge studied the Classics at the University of Zurich. He received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Zurich in 1972 with a dissertation on the defense speech Pro Murena by Cicero . His work on Cicero led him to scholarly interest in Roman law, and so he went on to study under Professor Max Kaser at the University of Salzburg and then he completed a doctorate at the University of Zurich in 1979 with a dissertation on Retentio in Roman law .

#1790

Joseph Sandler

#85182

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Joseph Sandler is a Washington, D.C. attorney who served as in-house general counsel for the Democratic National Committee from 1993 to 1998 and continued in this role at his firm Sandler, Reiff & Young through 2009. He now serves as an adviser to prominent Democrats, state parties, and progressive organizations, such as Moveon.org.

#1791

Sarah Song

#81364

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Sarah Song is professor of law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a political and legal theorist with a special interest in democratic theory and issues of citizenship, immigration, multiculturalism, gender, and race.

#1792

Orde Kittrie

#72199

Overall Influence

Orde Félix Kittrie is a tenured professor of law at Arizona State University, where his teaching and research focus on international law and criminal law. He has written extensively in the areas of international law, criminal law, nuclear non-proliferation, and international negotiations. Professor Kittrie is also the director of ASU's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Washington Legal Externship Program. Professor Kittrie was recipient of the 2006-2007 Centennial Professor of the Year award at ASU, a university-wide honor presented in recognition of outstanding teaching inside and outsid...

#1793

Timothy Jost

#77260

Overall Influence

Timothy S. Jost is Robert L. Willett Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Washington and Lee University School of Law. A top expert on American health law and policy, he is a co-author of Health Law , a casebook that pioneered health law as a teaching and research field in American law schools. His analysis and arguments regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have been widely quoted.

#1794

Mathilde Krim

#11880

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Mathilde Krim was a medical researcher and the founding chairman of amfAR, American Foundation for AIDS Research. Biography Mathilde Galland was born in Como, Italy to a Swiss Protestant father and Italian Roman Catholic mother. She received her PhD in Biology from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1953. In 1948, she married David Danon, an Israeli man she met at University of Geneva School of Medicine. She converted to Judaism before marriage. They had a daughter and shortly thereafter relocated to Israel.

#1795

Martha M. Pacold

#79301

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Martha Maria Pacold is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Education Pacold was educated at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago. She earned her Bachelor of Arts with highest distinction from Indiana University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and her Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Chicago Law Review.

#1796

Laurence Boisson de Chazournes

#71049

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Laurence Boisson de Chazournes is a French lawyer and professor at the University of Geneva and the Collège de France. Life and work Education and professional career Boisson de Chazournes obtained an undergraduate degree in political science in 1979 at the University of Lyon II. The following year she obtained a diploma in sociology and the master in law at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3. Between 1983 and 1990, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Geneva. After completing her postgraduate studies in 1987, she received her doctorate of international law in 1991 from the Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development.

#1797

A. Thomas Look

#99701

Overall Influence

A. Thomas Look is Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Vice-Chair for Research, Pediatric Oncology, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He is a pioneer in the use of zebrafish in cancer research and made major contributions to the understanding of leukemia and neuroblastoma biology and pathogenesis.

#1798

Barbara A. Babcock

#80292

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Barbara Allen Babcock was the Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, at Stanford Law School. She was an expert in criminal and civil procedure and was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty from 1972 until her death.

#1799

I. Nelson Rose

#62376

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

I. Nelson Rose is an internationally known author and public speaker, and is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on gambling and gaming law. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at Whittier College and a Visiting Professor at the University of Macau. Rose is best known for his internationally syndicated column and 1986 book, Gambling and the Law. To further educate and inform on the subject, he also maintains a comprehensive website, "Gambling and the Law," which can be found at www.gamblingandthelaw.com.

#1800

Marvin Chirelstein

#59587

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Marvin A. Chirelstein was a Professor Emeritus of Law at Columbia Law School, where he taught for nearly 30 years. He taught a contracts course to first year law students as well as tax and corporate finance courses. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Professor Chirelstein taught for over 15 years at Yale Law School. He authored several course books on law.

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