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,

#2201

Christopher T. Robertson

#71997
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Christopher Tarver Robertson is a specialist in health law working at the intersection of law, philosophy and science. His research explores how the law affects decision making in domains of scientific uncertainty and misaligned incentives, which he calls "institutional epistemology." Robertson is professor, N. Neal Pike Scholar, and Associate Dean at Boston University. He is affiliated faculty with the Petrie Flom Center for Health Care Policy, Bioethics and Biotechnology at Harvard Law School. His work includes tort law, bioethics, the First Amendment, and corruption in healthcare and politics.
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#2202

H. Verlan Andersen

H. Verlan Andersen
#72801
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Hans Verlan Andersen was a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a professor at Brigham Young University . Andersen was called to the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy in April 1986. On April 1, 1989 he was transferred to the newly created Second Quorum of the Seventy. On October 5, 1991, he was released from his service as a general authority. He died of cancer on July 16, 1992.
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#2203

Bing Ren

#122002
Overall Influence
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#2204

Silvano Sozzani

#122031
Overall Influence
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#2205

Libero Corso Bovio

#103332
Overall Influence
1948 - 2007 (59 years)
Libero Corso Bovio was an Italian lawyer, journalist and professor. He was the descendant of a family of Neapolitan lawyers and jurists, and he was also a lecturer in law and a journalist. He is also known for being the nephew of Italian poet and musician Libero Bovio and the great-grandson of the Italian philosopher Giovanni Bovio.
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#2206

Inez Smith Reid

#37478
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Inez Smith Reid is a former judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and former Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia. Reid was born in New Orleans and raised in Washington, D.C., where she graduated from Dunbar High School. She began college at Howard University before graduating from Tufts University. After college, she joined her twin brother, George Bundy Smith, also a future judge, at Yale Law School, where they were the only two black students in their class. At Yale, Reid roomed with future delegate from D.C. Eleanor Holmes Norton and befriended Marian Wright Edelma...
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#2207

Peter Savaryn

#22342
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Peter Savaryn was a Ukrainian-born Canadian lawyer. During World War II, he belonged to the Waffen-SS Galician Division. He was among the approximately 2,000 Waffen-SS Galicia fighters allowed to immigrate to Canada.
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#2208

Robert B. Mautz

#104451
Overall Influence
1915 - 1996 (81 years)
Robert Barbeau Mautz was an American university administrator. Mautz was chancellor of the State University System of Florida, serving from 1968 to 1975. Mautz was born and raised in Ohio. He earned a bachelor's degree in law from Yale University in 1940.
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#2209

Steven C. Krane

#87318
Overall Influence
1957 - 2010 (53 years)
Steven C. Krane was an American lawyer who was, at age 44, the youngest president of the New York State Bar Association, and died at the age of 53. He was known as "an expert in legal ethics" and professionalism. His most recent job was that of partner and general counsel at Proskauer Rose.
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#2210

Kate Darling

#46779
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Katherine 'Kate' Irene Maynard Darling is an American-Swiss academic. She works on the legal and ethical implications of technology. As of 2019, she is a Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab. Academic career Darling was born in the US, but grew up in Basel, Switzerland. Darling received degrees in Economics and Law from the University of Basel. After completing her 2014 dissertation titled Copyright and new technologies: theoretical and empirical analysis of copyright transfers and content production incentives at ETH Zurich, Darling returned to the US, to teach a robot ethics course at Harvard Law School with Lawrence Lessig.
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#2211

M. Cathleen Kaveny

#88076
Overall Influence
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#2212

Andrew Napolitano

Andrew Napolitano
#48906
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Andrew Peter Napolitano is an American former jurist and syndicated columnist whose work appears in numerous publications, including The Washington Times and Reason. Napolitano served as a New Jersey Superior Court judge from 1987 to 1995. He also served as a visiting professor at Widener University Delaware Law School, Seton Hall University School of Law, and Brooklyn Law School. Beginning in 1997, he became an analyst for Fox News, commenting on legal news and trials. Napolitano was removed from the network in August 2021 following sexual harassment allegations. He has written nine books on...
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#2213

Robben Wright Fleming

#62127
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Robben Wright Fleming , also known in his youth as Robben Wheeler Fleming, was an American lawyer, professor, and academic administrator. He was president of the University of Michigan from 1968 to 1979—and interim president again in 1988—and established a reputation for patience and willingness to engage in dialogue with students during the frequent campus protests of that era. He has been called "one of the truly great presidents of the University of Michigan".
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#2214

Ferdinand Grapperhaus

#77919
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ferdinand Bernhard Joseph "Ferd" Grapperhaus is a Dutch politician who served as Minister of Justice and Security in the Third Rutte cabinet from 26 October 2017 until 10 January 2022. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal .
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#2215

Pierre Legendre

#59538
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
Pierre Legendre was a French historian of law and psychoanalyst. Legendre held a position of research director at the École pratique des hautes études. His work is primarily devoted to the history of juristic institutions and concepts and to the anthropology of Western civilization.
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#2216

Bernard McNamee

Bernard McNamee
#72023
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Bernard L. McNamee is a government official who served as Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2018 to 2020. McNamee was confirmed by the United States Senate as a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on December 6, 2018. He previously served in various state and federal legal and policy positions and practiced energy law in the private sector.
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#2217

Alan Brownstein

#72542
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Alan E. Brownstein is Professor of Law and the Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality at the UC Davis School of Law . Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge Frank M. Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Professor Brownstein is well known for his scholarship on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. He has frequently commented on the intersection of religion and civil liberties with regard to marriage equality and Proposition 8. He serves on the legal committee of the ACLU of Northern California.
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#2218

Judith A. McMorrow

#101887
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Judith A. McMorrow is an American legal scholar currently serving as a Professor at Boston College Law School, where she teaches torts, professional responsibility and related topics. Her research interests include professional responsibility and age discrimination McMorrow participates in several ongoing pro bono activities, including representing women in Massachusetts seeking commutation based on Battered Woman Syndrome. She has explained the role of lawyers in a democratic society. She also advocates interdisciplinary and international scholarship.
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#2219

Stanisław Waltoś

Stanisław Waltoś
#105997
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Stanisław Marian Waltoś is a Polish legal scholar and academic specializing in criminal law and legal history, professor of legal sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, professor of the Jagiellonian University, who was Head of the Department of Criminal Proceedings at the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University from 1974, as well as the director of the Jagiellonian University Museum between 1977 and 2011.
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#2220

Thomas Duve

#82214
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Thomas Duve is a German jurist and historian. He is a law professor at Goethe University Frankfurt and director of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory of the Max Planck Society since 2009.
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#2221

Hudson H. Freeze

#122640
Overall Influence
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#2222

Morten Kjærum

Morten Kjærum
#56385
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Morten Kjærum is a Danish lawyer, who is the new head of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden. From 2008 to 2015 he directed the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights ,based in Vienna, Austria. He is also a former director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights and of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.
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#2223

Lars Vatten

#98156
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Lars Johan Vatten is a Norwegian epidemiologist. He has done research on cancer, perinatal and cardiovascular epidemiology. Biography Vatten was born in Trondheim, Norway, studied Medicine at the University of Tromsø and received a Master of Public Health in 1988 from the University of North Carolina. Two years later the University of Trondheim awarded him a PhD.
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#2224

David Alan Sklansky

#101383
Overall Influence
David Alan Sklansky is an American lawyer who is currently the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School . Early life Sklansky grew up in Newport Beach, California. Education A.B. in Biophysics, Highest Honors, UC Berkeley, 1981JD, Harvard University, magna cum laude, 1984
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#2225

Roger Wicker

#53654
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Roger Frederick Wicker is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Mississippi, a seat he has held since 2007. A member of the Republican Party, Wicker was a Mississippi State Senator from 1988 to 1995 and the U.S. Representative from Mississippi's 1st congressional district from 1995 until 2007.
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#2226

Meenhard Herlyn

#102393
Overall Influence
Meenhard Herlyn, D.V.M., D.Sc., is a researcher who works as director of The Wistar Institute Melanoma Research in Philadelphia. Herlyn obtained his D.V.M. degree from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hanover, in 1970. Following that, in 1976, he earned a D.Sc. in medical microbiology from the University of Munich. In 1976, he joined The Wistar Institute as an associate scientist, focusing on the emerging field of monoclonal antibodies—a groundbreaking technology that now underlies a significant portion of targeted therapeutics. Transitioning to the role of assistant professor in 1981, H...
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#2227

Maimul Ahsan Khan

Maimul Ahsan Khan
#56884
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Maimul Ahsan Khan is a Bangladeshi scholar of jurisprudence and comparative law and a former professor of law at the Faculty of Law, University of Dhaka. His expertise encompasses jurisprudence, Islamic law, Islam and Muslim culture, political science, human rights, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Oriental studies. He was awarded IIE-SRF fellowship for his academic contribution by the Institute of International Education . In 2012, the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund featured him as one of the persecuted academics in the world. Khan is currently serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Social Science at...
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#2228

Ediberto Roman

#79021
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ediberto Roman is an American legal scholar working as a professor of law at the Florida International University College of Law. Education Roman graduated magna cum laude from Lehman College in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in business management. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1988.
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#2229

R. Adam Engle

#2451
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
R. Adam Engle is an American social entrepreneur who initiated and developed the Mind and Life Dialogues between the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and panels of prominent scientists in the 1980s. Over the 22 years of his subsequent tenure as chief executive of the Mind and Life Institute, which he co-founded in 1990, his work contributed significantly to the establishment of contemplative science as a new field of research.
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#2230

Mark Filip

#105607
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Mark Robert Filip is an American lawyer specializing in class action and white collar criminal and regulatory defense. Formerly a partner at Skadden, Arps, he currently practices in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland and Ellis. From 2004 until 2008, Filip served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. As the George W. Bush administration ended, Filip served as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, and as the Barack Obama administration began he briefly served as acting attorney general .
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#2231

Manfred Gerlach

#74215
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Manfred Gerlach was a German jurist and politician, and the longtime leader of the East German Liberal Democratic Party. He served as Chairman of the Council of State and was thus head of state of East Germany from 6 December 1989 to 5 April 1990.
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#2232

Glafcos Clerides

#57189
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Glafcos Ioannou Clerides was a Cypriot statesman, who served as President of Cyprus in 1974 and from 1993 to 2003. A barrister and former Royal Air Force pilot, Clerides played an important role in the Cypriot struggle for independence, first as a member of the anti-colonial guerilla organization EOKA and later in the drafting of the country's constitution. He then served as the first Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1960 to 1976, and briefly took over the presidency of Cyprus on an interim basis following the failure of the 1974 coup, overseeing the island's defence amidst the Turkish invasion.
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#2233

Douglas Husak

#108227
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Douglas N. Husak is an American legal philosopher, academic and author. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and co-directs the Institute for Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University. Husak has authored over 100 scholarly articles and 6 books. He has conducted research on the intersection between moral philosophy and the substantive criminal law, focusing especially on criminalization decisions and the moral limits of the criminal sanction. Husak's books include The Philosophy of Criminal Law: Selected Essays, Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, Legalize This! The C...
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#2234

Verica Trstenjak

#100867
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Verica Trstenjak is a Slovenian Doctor of Laws and Professor of European Law based in Vienna, Austria. From 2006 to 2012 she has been an Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg , from 2004 to 2006 judge of the General Court.
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#2235

He Jiahong

#81038
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
He Jiahong is an expert in the field of criminal justice in China and teaches at the Renmin University of China in Beijing. In addition to his legal and teaching work, He is also an editor and writer, publishing on legal matters, and also writing crime novels, of which Hanging Devils: Hong Jun Investigates, also known as Crime of Blood is best known.
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#2236

Mark S. Scarberry

#91400
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mark Stephen Scarberry is professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law. Much of his research and teaching focuses on bankruptcy and constitutional law. Scarberry is "a self-described evangelical Protestant."
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#2237

Brett Scharffs

Brett Scharffs
#110185
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Brett Gilbert Scharffs is the Rex E. Lee Chair and Professor of Law at J. Reuben Clark Law School, part of Brigham Young University . He is also the Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
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#2238

Zac Posen

Zac Posen
#8265
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Zachary E. Posen is an American fashion designer. Early life Posen was born and raised in a Jewish family in New York City, residing in the SoHo neighborhood of lower Manhattan. He is the son of Susan , a corporate lawyer, and Stephen Arnold Posen, an artist. He has family roots in Shklow, Belarus, and Żychlin, Poland. His interest in fashion design started early, and as a child he would steal yarmulkes from his grandparents' synagogue to make ball dresses for dolls.
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#2239

José Antonio Guzmán Cruzat

José Antonio Guzmán Cruzat
#46507
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
José Antonio Guzmán Cruzat is a Chilean lawyer and academic, he is currently the Chancellor of Universidad de los Andes position that he assumed for the first time on January 21, 2014, and for a second five-year term in January 2019.
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#2240

Pierre-Marc Johnson

#38248
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
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#2241

Zhao Yun

#65530
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Zhao Yun is a Hong Kong lawyer specialising in space law and international economic law. He is Professor and Head of the Department of Law of the University of Hong Kong since 2016. Biography From 1991 to 1998 he studied at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1995 and a master's degree in 1998. Then from 1998 to 1999, Zhao studied at the Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he obtained a master's degree in public international law.
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#2242

Dorothea Zucker-Franklin

#118469
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Dorothea Zucker-Franklin was a physician and medical researcher in the fields of hematology, immunology and cell biology. Born in Berlin, Germany, she fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1936 to escape the Nazi regime. In 1948, the family emigrated to New York, where Zucker-Franklin attended Hunter College for her undergraduate education and earned a medical degree from New York Medical College. Following her internship and residency, she trained in electron microscopy, and would become well-known for her use of this technique to study blood cells. She began teaching at the New York University School of Medicine in 1963 and became a full professor in 1974.
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#2243

Antonio García-Trevijano

#59194
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Antonio García-Trevijano Forte was a Spanish republican lawyer, notary public, jurist, philosopher, art critic, author and political activist. Born in Alhama de Granada, he was a prominent figure in the opposition to the Francoist dictatorship.
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#2244

Noyes Leech

#85632
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Noyes E. Leech was an American lawyer and professor. Early life and education Leech was born in Ambler, Pennsylvania, to Charles Sherman and Margaret Leech. He attended Lower Merion High School , and received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943, and his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1948. During Leech's third year of law school, he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. While pursuing the study of law, Leech reestablished the Mitchell Club as a diverse group of fellow legal students.
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#2245

Don Harper Mills

#79654
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Don Harper Mills was an American pathologist and medical-legal scholar. He was a clinical professor of pathology and psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, president of the American College of Legal Medicine from 1974 to 1976, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, of which he served as president from 1986 to 1987. He was also a practicing lawyer who served as medical director of the County of Los Angeles Medical Malpractice Program. He is known for telling the "Ronald Opus" story to members of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 1987, when he was the Academy's president.
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#2246

Wayne Hsiung

Wayne Hsiung
#40386
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Wayne Hsiung is an American attorney and activist. Hsiung is a co-founder of The Simple Heart Initiative and previously led the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere , which he also co-founded. Hsiung was a lawyer with the law firms DLA Piper and Steptoe & Johnson, a Searle Fellow and visiting assistant professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, and a National Science Foundation-funded graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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#2247

Richard Rifkind

#86076
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Richard Rifkind was an American cancer researcher. Rifkind was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of Simon H. Rifkind and his wife Adele . He graduated from the Loomis School in 1948. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951. The same year he commenced medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating in 1955. He served as an intern then as a resident at Presbyterian Hospital. During 1957–59 he also served in the United States Air Force.
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#2248

Kerstin von der Decken

#115596
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Kerstin von der Decken is a German legal scholar and politician of the Christian Democratic Union who has been serving as State Minister of Justice and Health in the government of Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein Daniel Günther since 2022.
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#2249

Stephen Dycus

#119197
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Stephen Dycus is an American professor of National Security Law at the Vermont Law School. Biography Dycus obtained his bachelor's degree from the Southern Methodist University in 1963 and two years later got Bachelor of Laws degree at the same place. In 1976 he got his Master of Laws degree from Harvard University and the same year became faculty member of the Vermont Law School. From 1983 to 1984 he was a visiting scholar at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley and by 1991 held the same position at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. From ...
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#2250

Michael Spindelegger

#76228
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Michael Spindelegger is an Austrian politician. He served in the cabinet of Chancellor Werner Faymann as foreign minister of Austria from 2008 to 2013 and as finance minister from 2013 to 2014; additionally, he held the office of vice-chancellor from 2011 to 2014. Spindelegger was also the leader of the Austrian People's Party from 2011 to 2014. In August 2014 he unexpectedly resigned from all political positions. Since 2016, he has been serving as Director General of the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development .
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