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,
#1951
Alberto Pérez Pérez
#78196
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Alberto Pérez Pérez was a Uruguayan legal scholar and human rights advocate. In the early 1970s he was Dean of the School of Law, University of the Republic. The civic-military dictatorship destituted him and he had to go in exile.
Go to Profile#1952
Ronald Sokol
#45325
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Ronald P. Sokol , is a lawyer, writer, and a member of the Bar in the United States and France. He is the author of A Handbook of Federal Habeas Corpus and Justice after Darwin . Sokol is an op-ed contributor to the International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor.
Go to Profile#1953
Dawn Oliver
#96102
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
A. Dawn H. Oliver is a British constitutional legal scholar. She is Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at University College, London. Biography Oliver was born on 9 September 1942. She was Dean of the Faculty of Law at UCL from 1993 to 1998. She was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2005, and as an elected as an honorary Queen's Counsel in 2012.
Go to Profile#1954
Neil Walker
#69442
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Neil Craig Walker is a Scottish lawyer who is currently the Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the School of Law of the University of Edinburgh. in 2009 he completed a review for the Scottish Government into the final appellate jurisdiction of the Scottish legal system.
Go to Profile#1955
Chris Murphy
#41670
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Christopher Scott Murphy is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Connecticut since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing from 2007 to 2013. Before being elected to Congress, Murphy was a member of both chambers of the Connecticut General Assembly, serving two terms each in the Connecticut House of Representatives and the Connecticut Senate .
Go to Profile#1956
Stephanie A. Finley
#65773
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Stephanie Ann Finley is the former United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana and is a former nominee to be a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Go to Profile#1957
Jeremy Travis
#29302
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jeremy Travis is an American academic administrator who served as the fourth president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a senior college of the City University of New York, starting on August 16, 2004. On October 25, 2016, Travis announced that he would step down from his position as president the next year. In August 2017, he joined the Arnold Ventures LLC as Senior Vice President of Criminal Justice.
Go to Profile#1958
Robert Jerry
#96756
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Robert "Bob" H. Jerry, II is the former dean of the University of Florida's Levin College of Law, serving from 2003 to 2014. He succeeded Jon Mills, who stepped down and returned to the University of Florida's law faculty. Jerry became Dean of the College in July 2003.
Go to Profile#1959
William W. Park
#64877
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
William W. Park is Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. His practice and teaching focus on international financial and commercial transactions. He has served as Arbitrator on the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland and the Appeals Tribunal of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, and currently sits on the North American Free Trade Agreement Chapter 14 Financial Services Roster.
Go to Profile#1960
Louis Matheson
#23602
Overall Influence
1912 - 2002 (90 years)
Sir James Adam Louis Matheson KBE CMG was a British engineer and university administrator, who served as the first Vice-Chancellor of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Early life Born in Huddersfield, Matheson studied engineering at Manchester University. Matheson graduated with a Bachelor of Science in engineering and a Master of Science from the University of Manchester, and a PhD from the University of Birmingham . After spending 6 years as a civil engineer from 1933 to 1938, he took up a position at the University of Birmingham and then the University of Melbourne, where he modernised the Melbourne University engineering curriculum.
Go to Profile#1961
Anatoly Kovler
#60639
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Anatoly Ivanovich Kovler is a Tajikistani-born Russian lawyer, former professor at the Academic Law University of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Russia. His term expired on 31 October 2012.
Go to Profile#1962
Nicole Stelle Garnett
#85638
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Nicole Stelle Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, teaching in the areas of property, land use, urban development, local government law, and education. She has written numerous articles on these subjects that have appeared in a variety of journals, including the Michigan Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Additionally, she wrote Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America, published by Yale University Press in 2009.
Go to Profile#1963
Irving L. Gornstein
#110104
Overall Influence
Irving "Irv" L. Gornstein is the Executive Director of the Supreme Court Institute and a Professor from Practice at Georgetown University Law Center. He teaches Constitutional Law, and co-teaches a Supreme Court Institute Workshop with Supreme Court advocate Kannon Shanmugam.
Go to Profile#1964
Frank Brennan
#32093
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Frank Tenison Brennan SJ AO is an Australian Jesuit priest, human rights lawyer and academic. He has a longstanding reputation of advocacy in the areas of law, social justice, refugee protection, reconciliation, and human rights activism.
Go to Profile#1965
John A. Robertson
#46317
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
John A. Robertson held the Vinson and Elkins Chair at The University of Texas School of Law. He wrote and lectured widely on law and bioethical issues. Robertson was the author of two books on bioethics, The Rights of the Critically Ill, published in 1983, and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies, published in 1994, and numerous articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation.
Go to Profile#1966
Hector MacQueen
#85296
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Hector Lewis MacQueen is a Scottish academic, a senior scholar of Scots law and legal history, and a former member of the Scottish Law Commission. He is Professor of Private Law at the University of Edinburgh and a former Dean of its Faculty of Law. He is author, co-author and editor of a large number books on Scottish law and legal history, including the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th editions of the standard text Gloag & Henderson Law of Scotland, and is former Literary Director of the Stair Society. Stetson University College of Law, Florida, appointedway. He is currently a member of the International Advisory Group for the JKLH-funded project, 'The Paradox of Medieval Scotland, 1093-1286'.
Go to Profile#1967
Bob Baxt
#85763
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Robert Baxt was an Australian lawyer and a chairman of the Trade Practices Commission, dean of law at Monash University and a professorial fellow of the University of Melbourne. Early life Baxt was born in Shanghai, China, raised in Australia, where his family had moved in 1947. He was educated at Newington College , commencing as a preparatory school student at Wyvern House, and the University of Sydney, and did his LLM - Master of Laws - at Harvard Law School 1963-1964.
Go to Profile#1968
Peter Swire
#45670
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Peter P. Swire is the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Swire is also Professor of Law and Ethics in the Scheller College of Business and has an appointment by courtesy with the School of Public Policy. He is an internationally recognized expert in privacy law. Swire is also a senior fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum and has served on the National Academies of Science and Engineering Forum on Cyber Resilience. During the Clinton administration, he became the first person to hold the position of Chief Counselor for Privacy in the Office of Management and Budget.
Go to Profile#1969
George R. Dekle Sr.
#50375
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
George Robert "Bob" Dekle Sr. is an American lawyer who was an Assistant State Attorney in Florida's Third Judicial Circuit from 1975 through 2005. During this time, he served as lead prosecuting attorney in the 1980 Orlando murder trial of serial killer Ted Bundy, which ultimately delivered the death penalty that was carried out in 1989. Dekle's book on the case, The Last Murder: The Investigation, Prosecution, and Execution of Ted Bundy, was published in 2011.
Go to Profile#1970
Lilian Edwards
#53253
Overall Influence
Lilian Edwards is a Scottish UK-based academic and frequent speaker on issues of Internet law, intellectual property and artificial intelligence. She is on the Advisory Board of the Open Rights Group and the Foundation for Information Policy Research and is the Professor of Law, Innovation and Society at Newcastle Law School at Newcastle University.
Go to Profile#1971
Tsatsu Tsikata
#47563
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Tsatsu Tsikata is a Ghanaian academic and lawyer. He is also a former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation. He is a notable affiliate and legal counsel to the National Democratic Congress and regarded as one of the leading members of the political party.
Go to Profile#1972
Mazie Hirono
#38306
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Mazie Keiko Hirono is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Hawaii since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Hirono previously served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2007 to 2013. Hirono also served as a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives from 1981 to 1995 and as Hawaii's tenth lieutenant governor from 1994 to 2002, under Ben Cayetano. She was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor of Hawaii in 2002, defeated by Republican Linda Lingle in the general ele...
Go to Profile#1973
Alex Magaisa
#73442
Overall Influence
1975 - 2022 (47 years)
Alex Tawanda Magaisa was a Zimbabwean academic and lecturer of law at the Kent Law School of the University of Kent. He served as the Advisor of the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Morgan Tsvangirai from 2012-2013. Prior to becoming Advisor to the Prime Minister, Magaisa had been working as a core member of a team of experts tasked to advise on the drafting of the new Constitution of Zimbabwe. He is known for his legal, political and social commentary work on issues affecting Zimbabwe and other developing nations through his blog The Big Saturday Read. His work was sometimes featured by Zi...
Go to Profile#1974
Derry Irvine, Baron Irvine of Lairg
#66736
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Alexander Andrew Mackay Irvine, Baron Irvine of Lairg, , known as Derry Irvine, is a Scottish lawyer, judge and politician who served as Lord Chancellor from 1997 to 2003. He founded and headed 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers in the 1980s, and later became a Recorder and Deputy High Court Judge. A member of the Labour Party, Irvine was appointed to the House of Lords in 1987 and served as Shadow Lord Chancellor from 1992 to 1997. He was appointed to the position in Cabinet by Prime Minister Tony Blair, his former pupil, after the 1997 election and served until his dismissal in 2003.
Go to Profile#1975
Santiago Legarre
#71388
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Santiago Legarre is an Argentine intellectual and a professor of law at Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. Legarre received his law degree in 1992 and subsequently earned a Master of Studies in legal research from Oxford University and a PhD from Universidad de Buenos Aires. While at Oxford he wrote a dissertation titled "The Historical Background of the Police Power", published in 2007 by the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law.
Go to Profile#1976
Peeter Järvelaid
#33095
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Peeter Järvelaid is an Estonian legal scholar and historian. Järvelaid is a professor in the University of Tallinn. He has developed semiotic and personality-centered research direction, writing hundreds of articles mostly about the European and Estonian legal history and education, published in Estonian, English, German, French, Russian, Latvian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Swedish. Since 2006 his studies have been increasingly concentrated on the international relations in the 20th century, which among others has required intensive archival researches in German and Polish archives. Since 2012 J...
Go to Profile#1977
Marek Wierzbowski
#110691
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Marek Jakub Wierzbowski is a Polish lawyer, legal advisor, professor of legal sciences, specialist in administrative law, academic teacher associated with the University of Warsaw, where he holds the Chair of Law and Administrative Law Proceedings.
Go to Profile#1978
John S. Dzienkowski
#97743
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
John S. Dzienkowski is an American lawyer and academic. He currently serves as the John F. Sutton Jr. Chair at the University of Texas School of Law.
Go to Profile#1979
Joan F. Kessler
#48743
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Joan F. Kessler is an American lawyer and a retired judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, serving from 2004 to 2020. Kessler previously served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin under President Jimmy Carter, and was the first female U.S. attorney in Wisconsin. She is married to Fred Kessler, who was also an influential Democratic politician and judge in Wisconsin.
Go to Profile#1980
Josephine Staton
#62276
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Josephine Laura Staton is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Early life and education Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Staton graduated from Lindbergh High School, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 from William Jewell College and obtained a Juris Doctor in 1986 from Harvard Law School. From 1986 until 1987, Staton was a law clerk for Judge John R. Gibson on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Go to Profile#1981
Rebecca Buckley
#46887
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Rebecca Hatcher Buckley is a medical doctor who has conducted research in pediatric immunological diseases. Biography Buckley graduated from Duke University in 1954 with a bachelor's degree. She received her Doctor of Medicine in 1958 from North Carolina School of Medicine, and training in pediatrics at Duke.
Go to Profile#1982
David Brown
#38605
Overall Influence
David D. Brown is an American lawyer, radio personality, editor, journalist, author, and co-creator and host of public radio's first statewide daily news-magazine for Texas, the Texas Standard. He has also produced and hosted Business Wars, NPR's Peabody award-winning Marketplace radio program, and KUT's Texas Music Matters, among others. He is also the author of the book The Art of Business Wars.
Go to Profile#1983
Colleen V. Chien
#67882
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Colleen V. Chien is an American attorney and academic working as a law professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches, mentors students, and conducts cross-disciplinary research on innovation, intellectual property, and the criminal justice system, with a focus on how technology, data, and innovation can be harnessed to achieve their potential for social benefit.
Go to Profile#1984
George Peter Canellos
#110937
Overall Influence
#1985
Drew S. Days III
#47739
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Drew Saunders Days III was an American legal scholar who served as Solicitor General of the United States from 1993 to 1996 under President Bill Clinton. He also served as the first African American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1980. He was the Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law at Yale Law School, assuming that post in 1992, and joining the Yale Law faculty in 1981. From 1997 to 2011, he headed the Supreme Court and appellate practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP and was of counsel at the firm's Washington, D.C. office until his retirement from the firm in December, 2011.
Go to Profile#1986
Steven Lubet
#35985
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Steven Lubet is a legal scholar and author. Lubet is the Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University. Lubet has been noted for his commentary on controversial issues such as the appointment of scholar Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois, the controversy over the legal status of Alice Goffman's research methods in her widely acclaimed book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City and support of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's speaking at a President Donald J. Trumps hotel while cases about the Administration's travel ban and "challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr.
Go to Profile#1987
Penny J. White
#75475
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Penny J. White is an American attorney and former judge who served as a judge on Tennessee’s First Judicial Circuit, as a judge for the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, and as a justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Former Justice White was the second woman to serve on the Tennessee Supreme Court. White was removed from office in a judicial retention election in 1996 as the only justice to lose a retention election in Tennessee under the Tennessee Plan. After her time in the judiciary, White served as a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law until her retirement in 2022...
Go to Profile#1988
Hedi Slimane
#2666
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Hedi Slimane is a French photographer and grand couturier. From 2000 to 2007, he held the position of creative director for Dior Homme . From 2012 to 2016, he was the creative director for Yves Saint Laurent. Since February 1, 2018, Slimane has been the creative, artistic and image director of Celine.
Go to Profile#1989
Tom Baker
#83099
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Tom Baker is professor of law and a scholar of insurance law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Education Baker holds both a BA and a JD from Harvard University. Professional career Baker clerked for Judge Juan R. Torruella of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He then practiced with the firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, DC. He served as an Associate Counsel for the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair.
Go to Profile#1990
Timothy Fisher
#88318
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Timothy Fisher is a dean emeritus and professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Early life and education Fisher grew up in New Haven, Connecticut; San Francisco; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Hartford, Connecticut. He attended Hartford Public High School and graduated in 1975 from Yale University with a B.A. in economics and in 1978 with a J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Go to Profile#1991
Alastair Mullis
#51788
Overall Influence
Alastair Mullis, LLB LLM , is Professor of Law and Head of the Law School at the University of Leeds. Biography He taught at King's College London from 1989–1999, where in 1996 he was appointed senior lecturer. He joined the University of East Anglia in 1999 and became Dean in September 2001 and Professor in 2005. Alastair Mullis has also held visiting appointments in the United States , Germany and Tunisia. Alastair Mullis is one of the specialist editors for Butterworths, Law of Tort and writes the annual review of tort cases for the All England Law Reports, Annual Review.
Go to Profile#1992
Jan Švankmajer
#5871
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his stop-motion animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.
Go to Profile#1993
Robert G. Lawson
#103935
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Robert "Bob" G. Lawson is a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, Kentucky, United States. Lawson holds the position of the principal drafter to both the Kentucky Penal Code and the Kentucky Rules of Evidence. He has also served as Dean of the College of Law from 1971 to 1973 and 1982 to 1988, and is a member of the University of Kentucky College of Law Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1996. He is also a member of the University of Kentucky Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
Go to Profile#1994
Birger Stuevold Lassen
#93839
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Birger Stuevold Lassen was a Norwegian jurist, legal scholar and expert on intellectual property law. Biography He was born at Molde in Møre og Romsdal, Norway. He grew up in Romsdal, where his father Odd Lassen was a lawyer. He obtained the examen artium in 1946. After completing Officer Cadet School, he went on to study law, obtaining the cand.jur. degree in 1954. He was an assistant judge in Stavanger, before he was appointed research fellow at the University of Oslo in 1957. He was appointed lecturer in 1961, senior lecturer in 1971 and professor in 1990. He was editor-in-chief of Tidss...
Go to Profile#1995
Heinz Schöch
#91191
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Heinz Schöch is a German Law professor and Criminologist. He is emeritus professor for Criminal law, Criminology, Youth law and sentencing at Munich University. Life Schöch was born in Bessarabia where his family were part of the ethnic German community. The region had been incorporated into the Soviet Union in June 1940, a couple of months before his birth, as part of the territorial carve-up envisaged in the non-aggression pact concluded between Hitler and Stalin the previous summer. Following the ethnic cleansing of the early 1940s he ended up in the US occupation zone of postwar Germany.
Go to Profile#1996
John Hardin Young
#64070
Overall Influence
John "Jack" Hardin Young is a trial lawyer who has a reputation for work in election law and electoral recounts. He was on the team of lawyers for the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 Florida election recount and the Bush v. Gore case, and is portrayed in the HBO film "Recount". He is widely known for being the first advocate for a statewide recount strategy that could have resulted in a win for Gore.
Go to Profile#1997
Michael Karayanni
#96096
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Michael Karayanni is an Arab-Israeli professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds the Bruce W. Wayne Chair in International Law. Biography He was educated at Bar-Ilan University ; George Washington University National Law Center ; Hebrew University of Jerusalem , University of Pennsylvania . His doctoral supervisors were Celia Wasserstein Fassberg and Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. .
Go to Profile#1998
Steven Colloton
#75659
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Steven Michael Colloton is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit since 2003. Early life and education Colloton was born in Iowa City, Iowa. He is the son of John W. Colloton, best known for his service as director and CEO for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 1971 to 1993. Colloton is also the brother of Ann Colloton. Steven attended Iowa City West High School. Colloton earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University in 1985 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1988. At Princeton, Colloton was a member of the Ivy Club, then an all-male eating club.
Go to Profile#1999
Elizabeth Cheney
#38064
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is an American attorney and politician. She represented in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017 to 2023, and served as chair of the House Republican Conference—the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership—from 2019 to 2021. Cheney is known for her vocal opposition to former president Donald Trump. As of March 2023, she is a professor of practice at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Go to Profile#2000
Bruce Charles Baguley
#111509
Overall Influence
