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,
#2151
Johannes Platschek
#102762
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Johannes Platschek is a German legal scholar. His research interests include Hellenistic Legal History, Roman Civil Procedure, ancient civil law appearing in non-legal sources, and the textual criticism of the Roman jurists writings .
Go to Profile#2152
Marian P. Opala
#46587
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Marian Peter Opala was a Polish-American lawyer and jurist who served as a justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court from 1978 to 2010. Opala was appointed to the state's highest court in 1978 by Governor David Boren. Prior to his appointment as a Supreme Court Justice, Opala served the State of Oklahoma in various positions, including Assistant County Attorney for Oklahoma County, Administrative Director of the Oklahoma State Court System, and as a judge on the Oklahoma Workers' Compensation Court.
Go to Profile#2153
Xavier Oberson
#89495
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Xavier Oberson is ordinary professor in Swiss and international tax law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva since 1994. He is also the founder and director of the LL.M. Tax at the University of Geneva.
Go to Profile#2154
Philip Slayton
#92873
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Philip Slayton is a Canadian lawyer, academic, and author. He has published several books about law in Canada, including Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada’s Legal Profession. Legal career Born in England, Slayton's family emigrated to Canada when he was a child. Slayton studied law at Oxford University as a Manitoba Rhodes Scholar, and later clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. He taught at McGill University and was Dean of Law at the University of Western Ontario. He practiced corporate law in Toronto with Blake, Cassels & Graydon from 1983 until his retirement i...
Go to Profile#2155
Peter Van Den Bossche
#63349
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Peter van den Bossche is a professor of international economic law at the University of Bern . In 2018 he was elected president of the Society of International Economic Law . He served as a judge on the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization from 2009-2017, following nomination by the European Union and appointment and re-appointment by the Member states of the World Trade Organization. In December 2013 his appointment was renewed. With the end of his formal appointment at the end of 2017, US-driven delays in appointing his replacement alongside US blocking of other key WTO vacancies has meant a growing crisis for the WTO-based multilateral trading system.
Go to Profile#2156
Tammy Baldwin
#36896
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Wisconsin since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, she served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 78th district, and from 1999 to 2013 represented Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. In 2012, Baldwin was elected to the United States Senate, defeating Republican nominee Tommy Thompson. In 2018, Baldwin was reelected, defeating Republican nominee Leah Vukmir. On April 12, 2023, Baldwin announced ...
Go to Profile#2157
David Skover
#70139
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
David Michael Skover is the former Fredric C. Tausend Professor of Law at the Seattle University School of Law. He taught, wrote, and lectured in the fields of federal constitutional law, federal courts, free speech & the internet, and mass communications theory. He is also a regionally acclaimed opera and musical theater singer.
Go to Profile#2158
Ernest Gellhorn
#89379
Overall Influence
1935 - 2005 (70 years)
Ernest Gellhorn was an American academic and legal scholar. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota Law School, and was a Guggenheim fellow. An expert on administrative and antitrust law, Gellhorn held a number of academic appointments, including dean of law in three universities: . Additionally, he was Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University, and professor of law at Duke University.
Go to Profile#2159
G. J. Kwakkel
#119903
Overall Influence
#2160
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
#29821
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg was the 15th President of the George Washington University, serving from 1988 to 2007. On August 1, 2007, he retired from the presidency and became GW's President Emeritus and University Professor of Public Service at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
Go to Profile#2161
Jeff Kosseff
#78724
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Jeff Kosseff is a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy. He was previously a journalist, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the George Polk Award. Education Kosseff graduated from the University of Michigan with bachelor's and master's degrees. He received a doctorate of jurisprudence from Georgetown University Law Center.
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Ken Macdonald
#66489
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Kenneth Donald John Macdonald, Baron Macdonald of River Glaven, is a British lawyer and politician who served as Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales from 2003 to 2008. In that office he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. He was previously a recorder and defence barrister. He is a life peer in the House of Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher and was previously a Liberal Democrat. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford until 2021.
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Roy Prosterman
#49973
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Roy L. Prosterman is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Washington and the founder of the Rural Development Institute , which changed its name to Landesa in January 2011. He is also active in the fields of land reform, rural development, and foreign aid. He has provided advice and conducted research in more than 40 countries in Asia, the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Prosterman has received many awards and distinctions, the 2003 Gleitsman International Activist Award, a Schwab Foundation Outstanding Global Social Entrepreneur and more recently, the inaugural 2006 Henry R.
Go to Profile#2164
Larry S. Gibson
#70975
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Larry S. Gibson is a law professor, lawyer, political organizer, and historian. He currently serves as a professor at the Francis King Carey School of Law in the University of Maryland, Baltimore; where he has been on the faculty for 38 years. Gibson currently serves as council for the firm of Shapiro, Sher, Guinot, and Sandler. He was the principal advocate for the legislation that renamed Maryland's major airport, the Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and published Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice in 2012.
Go to Profile#2165
Anu Bradford
#79417
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Anu H. Bradford is a Finnish-American author, law professor, and expert in international trade law. In 2014, she was named the Henry L. Moses Distinguished Professor of Law and International Organization at the Columbia Law School. She is the author of The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World.
Go to Profile#2166
David Limbaugh
#58018
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
David Scott Limbaugh is a conservative American political commentator and author who has also worked as a professor and as a lawyer. He is the younger brother of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh. Life and career Limbaugh was born on December 11, 1952, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Mildred Carolyn "Millie" and Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Jr. Limbaugh's paternal grandfather was Missouri state representative, lawyer, and United States Ambassador Rush Hudson Limbaugh Sr.
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Patricia O'Brien
#89204
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Patricia O'Brien is Ambassador of Ireland to Italy. She served as Ambassador to France and to Monaco from 2017 to 2021. She had served from 2013 as the Permanent Representative of Ireland to the United Nations and other International Organizations at Geneva.
Go to Profile#2168
Zel Fischer
#82759
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Zel M. Fischer is an American lawyer who has served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri since 2008. Fischer served a two-year term as chief justice from 2017 to 2019. A native of Watson, he received his undergraduate degree from William Jewell College and his law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While at William Jewell College he was a member of the Alpha Delta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Order. He was elected as a Republican to serve as Atchison County judge in 2006 after private practice in Atchison, Nodaway and Holt counties for nearly 15 years.
Go to Profile#2169
Deirdre Curtin
#109479
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Deirdre M. Curtin is a legal scholar who works in the area of law and governance of the European Union. Since 2015 she is Professor of European Law at the European University Institute of Florence. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Curtin studied law at University College Dublin and Trinity College, Dublin. She was appointed to the faculty of the Europa Institute at Utrecht University. In 2003, she moved to the professorship of International and European Governance and the multidisciplinary Utrecht School of Governance. In 2008 she was appointed Professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam, where in 2009 she founded the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance ACELG.
Go to Profile#2170
Iñigo Lamarca
#109496
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Íñigo Lamarca Iturbe is a Spanish lawyer and served as Ararteko , of the Basque Country between 2004 and 2014. He previously served as president of GEHITU, and is the first gay man to hold the office.
Go to Profile#2171
Robert L. Fischman
#89001
Overall Influence
Robert L. Fischman is the George P. Smith, II Distinguished Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana. He is also an adjunct professor at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Go to Profile#2172
Alvaro Bedoya
#78430
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Alvaro Martin Bedoya is an American attorney and government official who has served on the Federal Trade Commission since 2022. Known for his focus on digital privacy issues, Bedoya was the founding director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center. Bedoya is a member of the Democratic Party and was nominated to the position by President Joe Biden.
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Kenneth Norrie
#112475
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Kenneth McKenzie Norrie FRSE is a Scottish legal scholar. He is professor of law at the Strathclyde Law School, where he was formerly head of department. He has previously taught at the University of Dundee.
Go to Profile#2174
Maura R. Grossman
#77506
Overall Influence
Maura Robin Grossman is a research professor and former director of Women in Computer Science in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. She also is principal of Maura Grossman Law. Previously, she was Of Counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where she pioneered the use of technology-assisted review for electronic discovery.
Go to Profile#2175
Peter B. Rutledge
#73129
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Peter Bowman "Bo" Rutledge is the Dean and the Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia. An American attorney, academic and a specialist in international business transactions, international dispute resolution, litigation, arbitration, and the U.S. Supreme Court, he served as a law clerk for Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1998.
Go to Profile#2176
Hjalte Rasmussen
#57793
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Hjalte Rasmussen was Professor of European Union Law at the University of Copenhagen. Previously he was a Professor of law at the Law Department of the Copenhagen Business School and a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, at Bruges.
Go to Profile#2177
Sheldon Whitehouse
#57995
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Sheldon Whitehouse is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Rhode Island since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Attorney from 1993 to 1998 and the 71st attorney general of Rhode Island from 1999 to 2003.
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Maynard Jackson
#41348
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. was an American attorney and politician who served as the 54th mayor of Atlanta, Georgia from 1974 to 1982, and again as the city's 56th mayor from 1990 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first Black mayor of Atlanta and of any major city in the South; his three terms made him the second longest-serving mayor in the city's history, after six-term mayor William B. Hartsfield.
Go to Profile#2179
Goler T. Butcher
#88453
Overall Influence
1925 - 1993 (68 years)
Goler Teal Butcher was a lawyer, scholar, advocate, and professor in the field of international law. Early life and education Butcher was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, with a BA in 1946. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Penn. She earned law degrees at Howard University School of Law in 1957, and an LLM at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958, with a thesis titled "The Choice of Law Rules Applied to International Sales Transactions". At Howard she was editor-in-chief of the school's law review.
Go to Profile#2180
Tomasz Giaro
#90777
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Tomasz Giaro is a Polish lawyer specializing in Roman law, theory, philosophy and history of law as well as comparative law; a Professor of Legal Sciences and dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile#2181
Steven Drizin
#87296
Overall Influence
Steven A. Drizin is an American lawyer and academic. He is a Clinical Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. At Northwestern, Drizin teaches courses on Wrongful Convictions and Juvenile Justice. He has written extensively on the topics of police interrogations and false confessions. Among the general public, Drizin is known for his ongoing representation of Brendan Dassey, one of the protagonists in the Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer.
Go to Profile#2182
Frank Askin
#92052
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Frank Askin was an American jurist and professor of law at Rutgers School of Law - Newark. Career He was appointed to the Rutgers faculty upon his graduation from that school with highest honors in 1966. Admitted to the law school without an undergraduate degree, he was awarded a B.A. from City College of New York at the same time he received his J.D. from Rutgers.
Go to Profile#2183
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari
#43036
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari is an Israeli legal scholar and international women's rights advocate who is known for her work on family law, feminist legal theory, women's rights in international law, and women and religion. She was a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women from 2006 to 2018, and was the committee's vice chair during several terms. She is Professor of Law at the Bar-Ilan University and is the founding Academic Director of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women. She is also involved in internatio...
Go to Profile#2184
Georges Ugeux
#52657
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Georges Ugeux is a dual citizen of Belgium, his native country, and the United States, and was Group Executive Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange from 1996 to 2003. His banking career began in the 1970s in Europe, and he is currently the CEO of Galileo Global Advisors, a New York-based investment bank catering to emerging markets. He is a notable member of the Belgian diaspora, due to his influence in the world of international finance. He is a frequent public speaker and an op-ed contributor to the Huffington Post.
Go to Profile#2185
Stephen Boyd
#56895
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Stephen Elliott Boyd is an American lawyer who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2017 to 2021. He currently serves as Chief of Staff to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.
Go to Profile#2186
Carin Clauss
#61520
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Carin Ann Clauss was the first female United States Solicitor of Labor. Early life Carin Ann Clauss was born on January 24, 1939, in Knoxville, Tennessee. She attended Vassar College, graduating in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts. Three years later, Clauss graduated from Columbia Law School as one of six women in her class.
Go to Profile#2187
Piet Hein Donner
#60142
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jan Pieter Hendrik "Piet Hein" Donner is a retired Dutch politician of the Christian Democratic Appeal party and jurist. He was granted the honorary title of Minister of State on 21 December 2018. Early life and career The Donner family has produced a number of Calvinist judges. Piet Hein Donner's father, André Donner, was a judge at the European Court of Justice between 1958 and 1979, and was part of the government commission that looked into Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld's dealings with the Lockheed Corporation. His grandfather was Jan Donner, who served as Minister of Justice for t...
Go to Profile#2188
Paige Skiba
#99956
Overall Influence
Paige Marta Skiba is an American economist who is FedEx Research Professor Professor of Law and Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University Law School, and an associate editor of the International Review of Law and Economics. She is an expert on the causes of consequences of consumer borrowing at high-interest rates, such as payday loans and pawnshop loans. She finds that these borrowers have few other options for credit, but often default on these loans after making expensive payments. During the COVID-19 recession, she was among a group of scholars of bankruptcy in the United States who...
Go to Profile#2189
Luciana Boiteux
#82457
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Luciana Boiteux de Figueiredo Rodrigues is a Brazilian lawyer, professor of criminal law and criminology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro , researcher, feminist, and human rights activist. She is currently a councilwoman for the city of Rio de Janeiro, affiliated with the Socialism and Liberty Party .
Go to Profile#2190
Maciej Szpunar
#97229
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Maciej Aleksander Szpunar is a Polish lawyer, attorney at law, professor of legal sciences, university professor at the University of Silesia, in 2008–2009 undersecretary of state in the Office of the Committee for European Integration, in 2010–2013 undersecretary state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 2013 advocate general in the European Court of Justice.
Go to Profile#2191
Dubravka Šimonović
#63561
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Dubravka Šimonović is a Croatian jurist and specialist in human rights. She was appointed on 1 August 2015 as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, and is Visiting Professor in Practice in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#2192
Hugh Hickling
#99495
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
Reginald Hugh Hickling, CMG, QC , known as Hugh Hickling, was a British lawyer, civil servant, law academic, and author, and author of the controversial Internal Security Act of colonial Malaysia. Born in Derby, England, Hickling served from 1941 until 1946 in the British Royal Navy during World War II, and then joined the Colonial Legal Service. In 1955, Hickling was posted to Malaya , where he gained prominence as a lawmaker. He drafted the Constitution of Malaysia, and as Commissioner of Law Revision wrote the Internal Security Act of 1960, which provided for the detention of persons without trial.
Go to Profile#2193
William Edward Sell
#97558
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
W. Edward Sell was the Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1966 through 1977. Education He graduated from Washington & Jefferson College in 1945. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1947.
Go to Profile#2194
Peter Lindseth
#69232
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Peter Lindseth is Olimpiad S. Ioffe Professor of International and Comparative Law, at University of Connecticut. He is the recipient of the 2012 Daimler Berlin Prize and is a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Go to Profile#2195
Steven G. Younkin
#121617
Overall Influence
#2196
Anita Earls
#58678
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Anita Earls is an American civil rights attorney, educator and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. She previously served as the executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, as well as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. On November 6, 2018, Earls defeated Republican incumbent Justice Barbara Jackson in a three-candidate election to win a seat on the state's highest court.
Go to Profile#2197
Keith Stanton
#121727
Overall Influence
Keith Stanton is a British legal academic who was head of the Law Department at the University of Bristol. Stanton is the co-editor of The Common Law World Review, and has been elected President of the Society of Legal Scholars for 2011-2012.
Go to Profile#2198
Rebecca S. Eisenberg
#61748
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Rebecca Sue Eisenberg is an American lawyer and professor. She is a Robert and Barbara Luciano Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Education Eisenberg graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and JD from UC Berkeley School of Law where she also served as an editor of the California Law Review.
Go to Profile#2199
Joseph T. Bockrath
#114825
Overall Influence
Joseph Thurston Bockrath is the R. Gordon Kean Professor of Law at the LSU Law Center. He joined the faculty in 1976 following three years as an assistant professor of marine studies at the College of Marine Studies at the University of Delaware. His teaching areas include civil procedure, constitutional law, professional responsibility, and contracts.
Go to Profile#2200
Brice Dickson
#40485
Overall Influence
Brice Dickson is a barrister from Northern Ireland and Emeritus Professor of International and Comparative Law at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast. Formerly Professor of Law at the University of Ulster, he became the first Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission on its establishment in 1999, serving two three-year terms. He was a key figure related to the Holy Cross dispute in which Loyalists sought to blockade a Catholic primary school in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast. After his time on the Commission Dickson worked as a Professor of International...
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