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,
#2301
Miguel Méndez
#70435
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Miguel A. Méndez was a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law . Before joining the Davis faculty, he was the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford University Law School, where he was on the law faculty from 1977 to 2009. Before starting his teaching career, he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Alan Cranston , staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, deputy director of California Rural Legal Assistance and attorney with the Office of the Public Defender of Monterey County.
Go to Profile#2302
Catarina de Albuquerque
#78185
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Catarina de Albuquerque is a Portuguese lawyer and human rights activist who served as the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation . After becoming Executive Chair of Sanitation and Water for All in 2015, in September 2018 she was appointed SWA's Chief Executive Officer.
Go to Profile#2303
Frank H. Easterbrook
#126555
Overall Influence
#2304
Paul Waldau
#25605
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Paul Francis Waldau is an American ethicist and former professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he headed the graduate program on anthrozoology, which he founded. He has several times served as Barker Lecturer in animal law at Harvard Law School, and is the author of a number of books on animal rights and speciesism.
Go to Profile#2305
Paul van Zyl
#72331
Overall Influence
Paul van Zyl grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era and served as the Executive Secretary of South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995 to 1998. He received a BA and LL.B. degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1996 and an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1997. Paul also earned an LL.M. in Corporate Law from the NYU School of Law. Paul was selected as a Hauser Global Scholar at NYU, a program which selects 10 of the finest students from countries across the world, chosen on the ...
Go to Profile#2306
Guglielmo Verdirame, Baron Verdirame
#86350
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Guglielmo Verdirame, Baron Verdirame, is a legal scholar, barrister and a member of the House of Lords. He is Professor of International Law at King's College London in the Department of War Studies and the School of Law.
Go to Profile#2307
Tom Galligan
#86438
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Thomas C. Galligan Jr. is an American lawyer, legal scholar, administrator and educator who was the Interim President of Louisiana State University. He served as the eighth president of Colby-Sawyer College and as dean and professor of law at the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville, where he taught torts and admiralty.
Go to Profile#2308
Lucy Reed
#115910
Overall Influence
Lucy Ferguson Reed is an American lawyer, scholar and practitioner focusing on international investment arbitration, public international law and international commercial arbitration. Lucy Reed is currently the director of the Centre for International Law. She is also the first Professor of Practice at NUS Law.
Go to Profile#2309
Kenneth L. Karst
#118590
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Kenneth L. Karst was an American professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who wrote extensively on constitutional law and a wide range of other subjects. He was cited 12 times by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Go to Profile#2310
Eileen E. Gillese
#71968
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Eileen E. Gillese is a justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta and Oxford University. Before her appointment to the Court of Appeal, Gillese was a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Go to Profile#2311
David Green
#82906
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#2312
Marcus M. Reidenberg
#126923
Overall Influence
#2313
John C. Dernbach
#99700
Overall Influence
John C. Dernbach is a nationally and internationally recognized authority on sustainable development, climate change, and environmental law. He is Commonwealth Professor of Environmental Law and Sustainability at Widener University Commonwealth Law School and Director of its Environmental Law and Sustainability Center.
Go to Profile#2314
Ninon Colneric
#91031
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Ninon Colneric is the first female German judge at the European Court of Justice . Career Born in Oer-Erkenschwick, she studied legal science in Tübingen, Munich and Geneva. Following a period of academic research in London, she was awarded a doctorate in law by the University of Munich. She was authorised, by the University of Bremen, to teach labour law, sociology of law and social law. She was professor ad interim at the faculty of law of the universities of Frankfurt, and Bremen. She was a judge at the Labour Court Oldenburg . She was president of the Landesarbeitsgericht Schleswig-Holstein .
Go to Profile#2315
Roy Romanow
#49794
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Roy John Romanow is a Canadian politician who served as the 12th premier of Saskatchewan from 1991 to 2001. Early life Romanow was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Tekla and Michael Romanow, who were Ukrainian immigrants from Ordiv, currently Chervonohrad Raion, Ukraine. His first language as a child was Ukrainian.
Go to Profile#2316
Rashida Richardson
#81649
Overall Influence
Rashida Richardson is a visiting scholar at Rutgers Law School and the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and the Law and an attorney advisor to the Federal Trade Commission. She is also an assistant professor of law and political science at the Northeastern University School of Law and the Northeastern University Department of Political Science in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Go to Profile#2317
Alvin Bronstein
#46174
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Alvin J. Bronstein was an American lawyer, and founder and Director Emeritus of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. According to his ACLU biography, 'he has argued numerous prisoners’ rights cases in federal trial and appellate courts as well as the Supreme Court of the United States. He was a consultant to state and federal correctional agencies, appeared as an expert witness on numerous occasions and has edited or authored books and articles on human rights and corrections'.
Go to Profile#2318
Michael McDowell
#62538
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael McDowell is an Irish independent politician and barrister who has served as a Senator for the National University since April 2016. He previously served as Tánaiste from 2006 to 2007, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform from 2002 to 2007, Leader of the Progressive Democrats from 2006 to 2007 and Attorney General of Ireland from 1999 to 2002. He served as a Teachta Dála for the Dublin South-East constituency from 1987 to 1989, 1992 to 1997 and 2002 to 2007.
Go to Profile#2319
Lesley B. Wells
#51834
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Lesley Brooks Wells is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Education Wells earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Chatham College in 1959 and a Juris Doctor from the Cleveland State University College of Law in 1974. She was employed as a federal court intern through the Women's Law Fund from 1973 to 1974.
Go to Profile#2320
Berton Zbar
#127330
Overall Influence
#2321
Emmanuelle Jouannet
#111185
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Emmanuelle Tourme-Jouannet is a professor of International law at the Sciences Po School of Law. She teaches and carries out research in International law, International dispute, Human rights and International humanitarian law as well as in History of law and Philosophy of law. Her career as a jurist and a philosopher has begun after having taken courses in law and philosophy respectively at Panthéon-Assas University and the Paris-Sorbonne University .
Go to Profile#2323
Luke Cole
#83406
Overall Influence
1962 - 2009 (47 years)
Luke Winthrop Cole was an environmental lawyer and the co-founder of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, in California. He was a pioneer in using legal work for the environmental justice movement.
Go to Profile#2324
Mary May Robertson
#127606
Overall Influence
#2325
Adriana Albini
#103082
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Adriana Albini is an Italian pathologist and cancer researcher. She developed the concept of angioprevention which can be used to control cancer development. She is a competitive fencer and six of her novels have been published. In 2000 she was the Scientific Director at the Fondazione MultiMedica Onlus in Milan.
Go to Profile#2326
David Eric Lothian Johnston
#108130
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
David Eric Lothian Johnston KC is a Scottish legal expert, currently Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Edinburgh. Career Johnston was an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge. He obtained a B.A. in 1982, a M.A. and Ph.D. in 1986 and an LL.D. in 2001 at the St John's College, Cambridge. 1985/86 he spent time as visiting scholar at the German institute for legal history in Freiburg. He was appointed Junior Research Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge between 1985 and 1989, after which he moved into legal practice, concentrating on public law, in particular, human rights, and commercial law.
Go to Profile#2327
Judy Sheindlin
#74391
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Judith Susan Sheindlin , known professionally as Judge Judy, is an American court-show arbitrator, media personality, television producer, philanthropist, and former prosecutor and Manhattan family court judge.
Go to Profile#2328
Leander J. Shaw Jr.
#79441
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Leander Jerry Shaw Jr. was an American jurist who served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1983 until 2003. He was chief justice from 1990 to 1992. Born in Salem, Virginia, Shaw went to Lylburn Downing School in Lexington, Virginia. He graduated from West Virginia State University in 1952. He then served in the United States Army during the Korean War. In 1957, Shaw received his law degree from Howard University School of Law. In 1957, Shaw moved to Tallahassee, Florida, and was a law professor at Florida A&M University. He was admitted to the Florida bar in 1960 and practiced law in Jacksonville, Florida.
Go to Profile#2329
Kathleen Neuzil
#126139
Overall Influence
Kathleen Maletic Neuzil is the Director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019. Early life and education Neuzil studied zoology at the University of Maryland, College Park and graduated summa cum laude in 1983. She was a medical student at Johns Hopkins University, where she was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. She completed her residency at Vanderbilt University, where she specialised in internal medicine in 1987. She was made a Fellow in infectious disease at Vanderbilt University in 1991.
Go to Profile#2330
Brenda V. Smith
#99261
Overall Influence
Brenda V. Smith is a law professor at American University's Washington College of Law. She served on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Early life and education She graduated magna cum laude from Spelman College in 1980 and from Georgetown University Law Center in 1984.
Go to Profile#2331
Bartolomé Clavero
#92194
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Bartolomé Clavero Salvador was a Spanish jurist and historian, specialized in legal history. Clavero was a tenured full professor at the University of Seville. His works focus on usury, majorat and the concept of State during the Ancien Régime , with a materialistic point of view and often polemical content. He was a personal friend and biographer of Francisco Tomás y Valiente, who was murdered by ETA just five minutes after they had a conversation on the phone. Clavero died on 30 September 2022, at the age of 75.
Go to Profile#2332
Anna Katzmann
#51247
Overall Influence
Anna Judith Katzmann SC is an Australian lawyer and a current judge of the Federal Court of Australia. Katzmann is a graduate of the University of New South Wales. Before her appointment as a justice of the Federal Court, Katzmann was the President of the New South Wales Bar Association.
Go to Profile#2333
Peter Hamilton Bailey
#78580
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Peter Hamilton Bailey was a former Australian public servant and academic. He served as an advisor to seven Australian prime ministers, and later became a professor in human rights law at the Australian National University .
Go to Profile#2334
Andreas Arntzen
#82232
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Andreas Arntzen was a Norwegian barrister. He was a son of Sven Arntzen and father of presiding judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen. He took the cand.jur. degree in 1952, studied at Harvard Law School and was a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. In 1960 he became a barrister with access to work with Supreme Court cases. He was hired in the law firm founded by his father, today named Arntzen de Besche. He is best known as the defender of Arne Treholt in 1984–1985, together with Jon Lyng and Ulf Underland. From 1987 to 1989 he led the commission that delivered the Norwegian Official Report 1989: 2, scrutinizing the bankruptcy of Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk.
Go to Profile#2335
Henry G. Schermers
#101572
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Henricus Gerhard "Hein" Schermers was a legal scholar in three areas of law: International Institutional Law, the Law of the European Union and European Human Rights Law. He played a key role in developing these subjects through his writings. He was Professor of the Law of International Organisations at the University of Amsterdam, and then at the University of Leiden, where he had done his law studies.
Go to Profile#2336
Claria Horn Boom
#73729
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Claria Denise Horn Boom is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. She is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Go to Profile#2337
Raimo Lahti
#105591
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Raimo Otto Kalervo Lahti has been professor of Criminal Law at the University of Helsinki since 1979 and has been involved with reform of the Finnish Medical Law and Criminal Law. He has served as an expert for committees of the Finnish Parliament and the Finnish National Authority for Medicolegal Affairs . Between 2005 and 2009 he was an ad litem Judge to the International Criminal court for the former Yugoslavia
Go to Profile#2338
Nita A. Farahany
#37147
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Nita Farahany is an Iranian American author and distinguished professor and scholar on the ramifications of new technology on society, law, and ethics. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. She currently teaches Law and philosophy at Duke University where she is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society as well as a chair of the Bioethics and Science Policy MA program. She ...
Go to Profile#2339
Eric Schmertz
#82856
Overall Influence
1925 - 2010 (85 years)
Eric Joseph Schmertz was an American lawyer who specialized in labor negotiation, helping reach agreements between workers and management in many strikes and other threatened union actions in New York City, including actions by the city's taxi drivers and other municipal workers, as well as helping resolve other negotiations elsewhere in the United States. A law professor for many years, he also served as dean of Hofstra University School of Law.
Go to Profile#2340
Luca Antonini
#122743
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Luca Antonini is an Italian lawyer, jurist, and constitutional law professor at the University of Padua. He is Judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy since 26 July 2018. Biography Graduated in 1988 at the University of Milan, Antonini has been since 2001 professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Padua. Antonini is a lawyer as well and authorized to practice in Cassation.
Go to Profile#2341
Henning Jakhelln
#104366
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Henning Jakhelln is a Norwegian legal academic, and Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Oslo. He was born in Bodø, and obtained the cand.jur. degree in 1963 and the lic.jur. degree in 1967. In 1965, he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Oslo. He became a full professor of law in 1990. His specialty is labour law.
Go to Profile#2342
Robert M. Daines
#103179
Overall Influence
Robert M. Daines is an American lawyer and current Pritzker professor of law and business at Stanford Law School. His work focuses on the intersection of law and economics, such as issues related to IPOs and mandatory disclosure regulations.
Go to Profile#2343
Peter Lange
#128630
Overall Influence
#2344
Russell D. Niles
#102257
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Russell D. Niles was a lawyer and expert in Trust Law, president of the New York City Bar Association, and a dean of New York University School of Law. Early life and education Russell Niles was born in Twin Valley, Minnesota in 1902. He earned his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor from the University of Montana in 1924 and 1925, respectively.
Go to Profile#2345
Roger Kirst
#115605
Overall Influence
Roger W. Kirst is the Henry M. Grether Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Law. He has been a faculty member at the law school since 1974. Education Kirst received his B.S. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. After receiving this degree, he went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School. During his time as a student, he served as a member of the Stanford Law Review.
Go to Profile#2346
Páll Hreinsson
#108169
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Páll Hreinsson is the current President of the EFTA Court in Luxembourg. He is a former Justice at the Supreme Court of Iceland and professor at the University of Iceland. Education Páll graduated from Hamrahlíð College in 1983. He received a Cand. Juris degree from the University of Iceland in 1988. He was a visitor student in Administrative Law and Public Administration at the University of Copenhagen from 1990 to 1991 and received his doctorate from the University of Iceland in 2005.
Go to Profile#2347
Jonathan Rosand
#128760
Overall Influence
#2348
Reva Siegel
#104419
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Reva B. Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Siegel's writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality, and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. She is currently writing on the role of social movement conflict in guiding constitutional change, addressing this question in recent articles on reproductive rights, originalism and the Second Amendment, the "de facto ERA," and the enforcement of Brown. Her publications include Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking ; The Constitution in 2020 ; and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law .
Go to Profile#2349
Samuel A. Beatty
#114067
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
–Samuel Alston "Sam" Beatty was an American jurist and educator. Born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Beatty graduated from Tuscaloosa High School in 1939. He was enrolled as a student at the University of Alabama when he and his friends listened to the news broadcast of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They immediately went to Van De Graft Airfield and took the Army Air Corps Air Cadet entrance examination. He passed. After qualifying as a B-25 pilot, Beatty was sent to the Solomon Islands as part of the 69th Bomb Squadron of the 13th Air Force, where he flew 62 combat missions against Japanese air fields such as Kahili and Japanese shipping.
Go to Profile#2350
Patricia Pranke
#31058
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Patricia Helena Lucas Pranke is a Brazilian stem cell researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Between 2003 and 2005, Pranke was one of two scientists who helped the Federal Government of Brazil write the National Biosafety Law, regulating research on human embryonic stem cells in Brazil.
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