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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List of the most influential people in Law,

#201

Yoram Dinstein

#5603

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Yoram Dinstein is an Israeli scholar and professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. He is a specialist on international law, and a prominent authority on the laws of war. He served as President of Tel Aviv University from 1991 to 1998. Won the 2023 Israel prize for law research.

#202

Irene Khan

#1955

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Irene Zubaida Khan is a Bangladeshi lawyer appointed as of August 2020 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, the first woman appointed to this mandate. She previously served as the seventh Secretary General of Amnesty International . In 2011, she was elected Director-General of the International Development Law Organization in Rome, an intergovernmental organization that works to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development. She was a consulting editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.

#203

Alain Pellet

#11068

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Alain Pellet is a French lawyer who teaches international law and international economic law at the Université de Paris Ouest - Nanterre La Défense. He was director of the university's Centre de Droit International between 1991 and 2001. He is the author of numerous books.

#204

Owen M. Fiss

#16818

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Owen M. Fiss is an American professor who is a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale Law School. Biography Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Fiss received his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1959, B.Phil. from Oxford University in 1961, and LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1964.

#205

Erwin Griswold

#7418

Overall Influence

1904 - 1994 (90 years)

Erwin Nathaniel Griswold was an American appellate attorney and legal scholar who argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Griswold served as Solicitor General of the United States under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. He also served as the dean of Harvard Law School for 21 years. Several times he was considered for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. During a career that spanned more than six decades, he served as member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and as president of the American Bar Foundation.

#206

Vince Foster

#6199

Overall Influence

1945 - 1993 (48 years)

Vincent Walker Foster Jr. was an American attorney who served as deputy White House counsel during the first six months of the Clinton administration. Foster had been a partner at Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, where, as The Washington Post later wrote, he rose to "the pinnacle of the Arkansas legal establishment." At the White House, he was unhappy with work in politics and spiraled into depression, and in July 1993, he was found dead of a gunshot wound in Fort Marcy Park. Five official governmental investigations ruled his death a suicide, but several conspiracy theories emerged.

#207

Suzanna Sherry

#11646

Overall Influence

Suzanna Sherry is an American legal scholar in the area of constitutional law with particular emphasis in the subject of federal courts. She is the Herman O. Loewenstein Chair Emerita at the Vanderbilt University Law School.

#208

John Bolton

#1111

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

John Robert Bolton is an American attorney, diplomat, Republican consultant, and political commentator. He served as the 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as the 26th United States National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019.

#209

Georgios Papachatzis

#13398

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

Georgios Papachatzis , alternately spelled as Giorgos or George Papahatzis or Papachatzis, was a Greek jurist. Early life Papachatzis was born in Chalcis in 1905. He studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and was awarded a Ph.D. in Law in 1932.

#210

Risa L. Goluboff

#13639

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Risa Lauren Goluboff is an American lawyer and legal historian who serves as the 12th dean of the University of Virginia School of Law; she is the first woman to hold the position. She is also the Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law and a professor of history at the University of Virginia.

#211

Robin West

#13884

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robin West is the Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy emerita at the Georgetown University Law Center. West's research is primarily concerned with feminist legal theory, constitutional law and theory, philosophy of law, and the law and literature movement.

#212

Peter Häberle

#18957

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Peter Häberle is a German legal scholar, specialising in constitutional law. Biography Häberle is the son of Hugo Häberle, a medical doctor, and Ursula Häberle . Häberle studied law in Tübingen, Bonn, Freiburg im Breisgau and Montpellier. In 1961 he received his juris doctor under supervision of Konrad Hesse at the faculty of law, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. His thesis, titled "Die Wesensgehaltgarantie des Art. 19 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz", became both influential and controversial.

#213

Giorgio Gaja

#14152

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Giorgio Gaja is an Italian jurist. A scholar in international law, he was elected in 2012 as a judge of the International Court of Justice. Early life and education Giorgio Gaja was born in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1939. In 1960, he graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome with a degree in law. After completing his degree, he pursued a career in academia in cities including Vienna, Oxford and The Hague. In 1968, he was awarded the Libera Docenza in international law. He also worked as a research assistant at the University of Camerino from 1964 to 1969.

#214

Garrett Epps

#13062

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Garrett Epps is an American legal scholar, novelist, and journalist. He was professor of law at the University of Baltimore until his retirement in June 2020; previously he was the Orlando J. and Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law at the University of Oregon.

#215

Raoul Berger

#7414

Overall Influence

1901 - 2000 (99 years)

Raoul Berger was an American attorney and professor at The University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, he was the Charles Warren Senior Fellow in American Legal History. He is known for his role in the development of originalism.

#216

Gad Barzilai

#5174

Overall Influence

1958 - 2023 (65 years)

Gad Barzilai was an Israeli professor of law, political science and international studies, famous for his work on the politics of law, comparative law and politics, human rights, and communities. Barzilai published 18 books and 173 articles in major academic refereed journals and publishing houses. He had been a full professor of law, societies and justice, and international studies at the University of Washington and the University of Haifa Faculty of Law. Gad Barzilai had served as the dean of the Faculty of Law at University of Haifa and was the vice provost of University of Haifa from 20...

#217

John Calvin Jeffries

#15041

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

John Calvin Jeffries, Jr. is a prominent law professor and was dean of the University of Virginia School of Law from 2001 to 2008. Biography Jeffries is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is best known for his work in criminal law, with his essays included in many major textbooks in the subject area. He is also a co-author of one of the foremost criminal law textbooks, Criminal Law with Professors Richard J. Bonnie, Anne M. Coughlin, and Peter W. Low. Jeffries has authored or co-authored a total of ten textbooks, primarily on civil rights and criminal law.

#218

Louis Michael Seidman

#17277

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Louis Michael Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., a widely read constitutional law scholar and major proponent of the critical legal studies movement. Seidman's 2012 work is On Constitutional Disobedience, where Seidman challenges the viability of political policy arguments made in reference to constitutional obligation.

#219

Per Stjernquist

#11096

Overall Influence

1912 - 2005 (93 years)

Per Stjernquist was a Swedish law professor who was almost single-handedly responsible for establishing the teaching of the new field of sociology of law in Sweden from the 1960s. Stjernquist began his career as a local judge and court official. He became a doctoral student of the celebrated 'realist' jurist Karl Olivecrona in the 1940s but, as a left-leaning liberal, soon fell out with his supervisor over Olivecrona's authoritarian politics and vocal support in the war years for Nazi Germany's hegemony in Europe.

#220

William Baude

#13167

Overall Influence

William Patrick Baude is an American legal scholar. He currently serves as a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and is the director of its Constitutional Law Institute. He is a scholar of constitutional law and originalism.

#221

Austin Sarat

#7401

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Austin Sarat is an American political scientist who is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also a Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor. He has written, co-written, or edited more than fifty books in the fields of law and political science. Professor Sarat received a B.A. from Providence College in 1969, and both an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970 and 1973, respectively. He also received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1988.

#222

Larry Thompson

#13562

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Larry Dean Thompson is an American lawyer and law professor, most notable for his service as deputy Attorney General of the United States under United States President George W. Bush until August 2003.

#223

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#1267

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. , also known by his initials as RFK Jr. and the nickname Bobby, is an American politician, environmental lawyer and activist who promotes anti-vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. He is the chairman and founder of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group, and an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

#224

James Boyd White

#6468

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

James Boyd White is an American law professor, literary critic, scholar and philosopher who is generally credited with founding the "law and Literature" movement. He is a proponent of the analysis of constitutive rhetoric in the analysis of legal texts.

#225

Michael Broyde

#13702

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael Jay Broyde is a professor of law and the academic director of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University School of Law. He is also a senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. His primary areas of interest are law and religion, Jewish law and Jewish ethics, and comparative religious law. Broyde has published 200 articles on various aspects of law and religion and Jewish law, and a number of articles in the area of federal courts.

#226

Gloria Allred

#2742

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Gloria Rachel Allred is an American attorney known for taking high-profile and often controversial cases, particularly those involving the protection of women's rights. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

#227

Albie Sachs

#7094

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Albert "Albie" Louis Sachs is a South African lawyer, activist, writer, and former judge appointed to the first Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela. Early life and education Albie Sachs was born in Johannesburg at the Florence Nightingale Hospital to Emile Solomon "Solly" Sachs, General Secretary to the Garment Workers' Union of South Africa, and Rachel "Ray" Sachs . Both his mother and father fled to South Africa as children with parents who were escaping persecution against Jews in Lithuania. Sachs shared that at the time they left, the antisemitism had become so violen...

#228

Philip Bobbitt

#11436

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Philip Chase Bobbitt, is an Americann author, academic, and lawyer. He is best known for work on U.S. constitutional law and theory, and on the relationship between law, strategy and history in creating and sustaining the State. He is the author of several books: Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution , The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History , and Terror and Consent: the Wars for the Twenty-first Century . He is currently the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University School of Law and a distinguished senior lecturer at The University o...

#229

John Sexton

#4182

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

John Edward Sexton is an American lawyer, academic, and author. He is the Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University where he teaches at the law school and NYU's undergraduate colleges. Sexton served as the fifteenth president of NYU, from 2002 to 2015. During his time as president, NYU's stature rose dramatically into the ranks of the world's top universities, and it became the world's first global network university. Sexton has been called a "transformational" figure in higher education and was named by Time Magazine as one of the United States' 10 best college presidents.

#230

Mark Geragos

#4933

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Mark John Geragos is an American criminal defense lawyer and the managing partner of Geragos & Geragos, in Los Angeles. Early life and education Geragos was born in Los Angeles, California, where he attended Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, graduating with honors. He earned his bachelor's degree from Haverford College, in 1979, double-majoring in anthropology and sociology, then his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School at the Loyola Marymount University in 1982. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1983.

#231

Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain

#3298

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Jonathan L. Zittrain is an American professor of Internet law and the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and co-founder and director of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Previously, Zittrain was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford and visiting professor at the New York University School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is t...

#232

Hein Kötz

#14665

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Hein Kötz is a German jurist, former Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for foreign and international private law , the Bucerius Law School and Vice President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft .

#233

Martin D. Ginsburg

Martin D. Ginsburg

#14122

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Martin David Ginsburg was an American lawyer who specialized in tax law and was the husband of lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He taught law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and was of counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of the American law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

#234

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson

#3220

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he has challenged bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system, especially children. He has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing children under 18 to death or to life imprisonment without parole. He has assisted in cases that have saved dozens of prisoners from the death penalty, advocated for the poor, and develope...

#235

James Crawford

#15669

Overall Influence

1948 - 2021 (73 years)

James Richard Crawford, AC, SC, FBA was an Australian academic and practitioner in the field of public international law. He was elected as Judge of the International Court of Justice for a full term of 9 years in November 2014 and took his seat on the court in February 2015. From 1990 to 1992 Crawford was Dean of the Sydney Law School where he was also the Challis Professor of International Law from 1986 to 1992. From 1992 to 2014, he was Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and Fellow in Law at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was formerly Director of the Lauter...

#236

Herbert Hovenkamp

#13081

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Herbert Hovenkamp is an American legal scholar serving as James G. Dinan University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that he held the Ben and Dorothy Willie Chair at the University of Iowa College of Law. Hovenkamp is a recognized expert and prolific author in the area of antitrust law.

#237

Ajit Pai

#1897

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Ajit Varadaraj Pai is an American lawyer who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2017 to 2021. He has been a partner at the private-equity firm Searchlight Capital since April 2021.

#238

Gerald L. Neuman

#13628

Overall Influence

Gerald L. Neuman is J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School. He was previously Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School.

#239

John Dugard

#8826

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Christopher John Robert Dugard , known as John Dugard, is a South African professor of international law. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has served on the International Law Commission, the primary UN institution for the development of international law, and has been active in reporting on human-rights violations by Israel in the Palestinian territories.

#240

Richard A. Falk

Richard A. Falk

#7128

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Richard Anderson Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor's Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In 2004, he was listed as the author or coauthor of 20 books and the editor or coeditor of another 20 volumes. Falk has published extensively with multiple books written about international law and the United Nations.

#241

Anne Coughlin

#17511

Overall Influence

Anne M. Coughlin is the Lewis F. Powell Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Early life and education Coughlin graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in English in 1978. She then completed her M.A. in English at Columbia University in 1979 before entering law school. She earned her J.D. at the New York University School of Law, graduating in 1984. At NYU, Coughlin served as managing editor of the New York University Law Review.

#242

Smilja Avramov

#17610

Overall Influence

1918 - 2018 (100 years)

Smilja Avramov was a Serbian academician, legal scholar, social activist and educator in international law. She was a member of the Senate of Republika Srpska from 1996 to 2009. Before she retired she was a Professor of International law at the Law Faculty at Belgrade University.

#243

Upendra Baxi

#9794

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Upendra Baxi is a legal scholar, since 1996 professor of law in development at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He is presently a Research Professor of Law and Distinguished Scholar in Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. He has been the vice-chancellor of University of Delhi , prior to which he held the position of professor of law at the same university for 23 years . He has also served as the vice-chancellor of the University of South Gujarat, Surat, India .

#244

Afshin Ellian

#13050

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Afshin Ellian is an Iranian-born Dutch professor of law, philosopher, poet, and critic of political Islam. He is an expert in international public law and philosophy of law. Biography In 1989, Ellian came to the Netherlands as a political refugee. Having experienced first-hand the Islamic theocratic government of Iran, he writes often about how such issues are affecting the world in general and the Netherlands in particular. Due to threats on his life tied to such criticism, he is currently heavily guarded.

#245

Mahendra Pal Singh

#16340

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Mahendra Pal Singh , is a jurist and a scholar of constitutional law, administrative law and comparative law, and Professor Emeritus at University of Delhi. Presently, he serves as a research professor of law, Distinguished Scholar in Public Law & Comparative Law, Director – Centre for Comparative Law and Chairman of the Law School Doctoral Committee at Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. He is best known amongst students of Constitution of India as the author of V.N. Shukla's Constitution of India a standard textbook for lawyers on Constitution of India. Internationally how...

#246

Frederick Schauer

#16452

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Frederick Schauer is an American legal scholar who serves as David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is also the Frank Stanton Professor emeritus of the First Amendment at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is well known for his work on American constitutional law, especially free speech, and on legal reasoning, especially the nature and value of legal formalism.

#247

Marty Lederman

#17242

Overall Influence

Martin "Marty" S. Lederman is the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel , appointed by President Obama in January 2009. He previously served as an Attorney Advisor in OLC from 1994 to 2002. He has concentrated on questions involving freedom of speech, the Religion Clauses, congressional power and federalism, equal protection, separation of powers, copyright, and food and drug law. He helped draft the June 2010 memorandum authorizing the assassination of U.S. citizen and Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

#248

Andrzej Zoll

#18949

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Andrzej Stanisław Zoll is a Polish lawyer, former judge and president of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, former Polish Ombudsman, former president of the State Electoral Commission, former president of the Legislative Council, co-author of the Polish Penal Code of 1997. Professor of criminal law at the Jagiellonian University.

#249

A. Mitchell Polinsky

#12682

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Alan Mitchell Polinsky is the Josephine Scott Crocker Professor of Law and Economics at Stanford Law School. At Stanford, Polinsky is the founder and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. He is also a past president of the American Law and Economics Association.

#250

Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter

#9238

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Stephen Lisle Carter is an American legal scholar who serves as the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He writes on legal and social issues. Early life and education Carter was born in Washington, D.C., the second of his parents' five children. He was raised in a family committed to public service. His mother worked as an executive assistant for Julian Bond and M. Carl Holman of the National Urban Coalition. An attorney turned administrator, his father was executive director of the Washington Urban League, and later a vice president at Cornell University. Carter's gr...

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