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,
#251
Michelle Alexander
#4275
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Michelle Alexander is an American writer, attorney, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Since 2018, she has been an opinion columnist for The New York Times.
Go to Profile#252
Paul Brest
#18971
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Paul Brest is an American scholar of constitutional law, a former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and a former dean of Stanford Law School. He is an influential theorist on the role of non-profit organizations in society, and is widely credited with coining the name originalism to describe a particular approach to interpreting the United States Constitution.
Go to Profile#253
Armando Uribe
#15193
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Armando Uribe Arce was a Chilean writer, poet, lawyer, and diplomat. Biography Uribe was born in Santiago. He was educated at the Saint George's College. He later studied law in the University of Chile and received his law degree in 1959, where he served as a law professor for over 30 years.
Go to Profile#254
Christopher Darden
#7824
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Christopher Allen Darden is an American lawyer, author, and lecturer. He worked for 15 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, where he gained national attention as a co-prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
Go to Profile#255
Glenn Reynolds
#3738
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and is known for his American politics blog, Instapundit. Instapundit blog Reynolds' blog got started as a class project in August 2001, when he was teaching a class on Internet law. Much of Instapundit's content consists of links to other sites, often with brief comments.
Go to Profile#256
Kellyanne Conway
#2224
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.
Go to Profile#257
John Cyril Smith
#16822
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Sir John Cyril Smith , born Barnard Castle, County Durham, was an English legal academic. Smith was an authority on English criminal law and the philosophy of criminal liability. Together with Brian Hogan he was the author of Smith & Hogan's Criminal Law, a leading undergraduate text on English criminal law. The textbook is now in its sixteenth edition and has been used as persuasive authority on crimes prosecuted in the law courts of England and Wales and elsewhere in the common law world. In 1998, Lord Bingham praised Smith; "whom most would gladly hail as the outstanding criminal lawyer o...
Go to Profile#258
Eric Barendt
#12961
Overall Influence
Eric M. Barendt is the Goodman Professor of Media Law at University College London. After graduating with a BCL and an MA degree at Oxford, Barendt was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn. He began lecturing in law as a fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1971. In 1990 he left Oxford to take up a position as Goodman Professor of Media Law at University College London, the first media law professorship in the United Kingdom. He also teaches jurisprudence at the undergraduate level. He has been a visiting professor at Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Siena, the University of Me...
Go to Profile#259
Charles Nesson
#12017
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Charles Rothwell Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. He is author of Evidence, with Murray and Green, and has participated in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.
Go to Profile#260
Karen Nelson Moore
#23885
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Karen Nelson Moore is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Her chambers are in Cleveland, Ohio. Education Moore received her Artium Baccalaureus from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1970, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, also magna cum laude, in 1973.
Go to Profile#261
Muhammad Hamidullah
#5686
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
Muhammad Hamidullah was a scholar of hadiths and Islamic law and a prolific academic author. A polymath with competence in 22 languages, including Urdu , Persian, Arabic, French, English, German, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Russian, his dozens of books and hundreds of articles on Islamic science, history and culture appeared in several languages. He was still studying Thai at the age of 84.
Go to Profile#262
Serge Guinchard
#8454
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Serge Guinchard is a French jurist who formerly taught at the Law School of Dakar and Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 and most recently at Panthéon-Assas University, where he is now Professor emeritus. He has also held political posts in the metropolitan government of Lyon.
Go to Profile#263
Nigel Simmonds
#17261
Overall Influence
Nigel Simmonds is Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Cambridge and former Dean of College at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Career Simmonds attended one of the first comprehensive schools in Britain in Cumberland before going to study law at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1970. He then studied for the LL.M where he once again attained a First Class. After a PhD and some years of teaching at Manchester University, he returned to Cambridge where he was a University Professor in Jurisprudence until his retirement in 2018. At Corpus, Nigel Simmonds was Director of Studies in Law and Dean of College.
Go to Profile#264
Douglas Laycock
#14941
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Douglas Laycock is the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and a leading scholar in the areas of religious liberty and the law of remedies. He also serves as the 2nd Vice President of the American Law Institute and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#265
Paul Cliteur
#5649
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Paul Bernard Cliteur is a Dutch professor of jurisprudence at Leiden University, as well as a politician, philosopher, writer, publicist and columnist. He is known for his conservative perspective, his atheism, his republicanism, and his dislike of Islam. He is a member of De Vrije Gedachte. Since 2015, Cliteur is a member of the Dutch political party Forum voor Democratie, where he is chairman of the advisory board and the party's official think tank. In 2019 he was elected to be parliamentary group leader for Forum voor Democratie in the Dutch Senate.
Go to Profile#266
David B. Wexler
#14970
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
David B. Wexler is a Professor of Law at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a Distinguished Research Professor of Law Emeritus at the James E. Rogers College of Law, Tucson, Arizona, and an Honorary President of the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence.
Go to Profile#267
Rakesh Jain
#8533
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Rakesh K. Jain is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard Medical School and director of the E.L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Juan E. Méndez
#4162
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Juan E. Méndez is an Argentine lawyer, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and human rights activist known for his work on behalf of political prisoners.
Go to Profile#269
William Twining
#15893
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
William Lawrence Twining is the Emeritus Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, having held the post until 1996. He is a leading member of the Law in Context movement, and has contributed especially to jurisprudence, evidence and proof, legal method, legal education, and intellectual history. He has focused recently on "globalization" and legal theory.
Go to Profile#270
George L. Priest
#15425
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
George L. Priest is an American legal scholar specializing in antitrust law. Priest has taught at the Yale Law School since 1981, where he is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Priest is a noted antitrust scholar, and is also the author of a wide number of articles and monographs on the subjects of product liability, tort law, insurance litigation, and settlement. Among his students at Yale was journalist Emily Bazelon.
Go to Profile#271
John Gardner
#13479
Overall Influence
1965 - 2019 (54 years)
John Gardner was a Scottish legal philosopher. He was senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and prior to that the Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and a fellow of University College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#272
Mark Lemley
#13991
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Mark A. Lemley is currently the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Law School Program in Law, Science & Technology, as well as a founding partner of the law firm of Durie Tangri LLP, which he has been practicing with since 2009. According to Web of Science on 2023-06-16 he has 117 indexed publications and a Hirsch index of 46, which puts him in top 5% of law professors in the USA.
Go to Profile#273
Heather K. Gerken
#16176
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Heather Kristin Gerken is an American legal scholar who serves as the Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches election law and runs the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project. Since 2017, she has also served as the Dean of Yale Law School.
Go to Profile#274
David E. Van Zandt
#7797
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
David Van Zandt is an American attorney, legal scholar, and academic administrator. He served as president of The New School from Jan. 2011 to Apr. 15, 2020. Earlier he served as Dean of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, from 1995 to 2011. He has taught courses in international financial markets, business associations, property, practical issues in business law, and legal realism. He is an expert in business associations, international business transactions, property law, jurisprudence, law and social science, and legal education.
Go to Profile#275
Richard Revesz
#12680
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Richard L. Revesz is an American lawyer and academic. He is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. During his government employment, he is on leave as the AnBryce Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He served as dean of the New York University School of Law from 2002 to 2013, and as the director of the American Law Institute from 2014 to 2023.
Go to Profile#276
Samuel Issacharoff
#20359
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Samuel Issacharoff is an American law professor, whose scholarly work focuses on constitutional law, voting rights and civil procedure. Career Issacharoff graduated from Binghamton University in 1975 and Yale Law School in 1983. He was a member of the Spartacist League as a student. Issacharoff was born in Argentina in Buenos Aires. He is currently the Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. He served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School for the Fall 2008 semester. Prior to joining NYU Law's faculty, he taught at Columbia Law Sc...
Go to Profile#277
Eric Heinze
#14641
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities at the School of Law Queen Mary, University of London. He has made contributions in the areas of legal philosophy, justice theory, jurisprudence, and human rights. He has also contributed to the law and literature movement.
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Alan A. Stone
#5469
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Alan Abraham Stone was an American psychiatrist who was the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard Law School. His writing and teaching has focused on professional medical ethics, issues at the intersection of law and psychiatry, and the topic of violence in both law and in psychiatry. Stone served as president of the American Psychiatric Association. He also served for a number of years as the film critic for the Boston Review.
Go to Profile#279
Michael Dukakis
#3296
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Michael Stanley Dukakis is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history and only the second Greek-American governor in U.S. history, after Spiro Agnew. He was nominated by the Democratic Party for president in the 1988 election, losing to the Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush.
Go to Profile#280
Thelton Henderson
#13383
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Thelton Eugene Henderson is an inactive senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He has played an important role in the field of civil rights as a lawyer, educator, and jurist.
Go to Profile#281
John H. Langbein
#22106
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
John Harriss Langbein is an American legal scholar who serves as the Sterling Professor emeritus of Law and Legal History at Yale University. He is an expert in the fields of trusts and estates, comparative law, and Anglo-American legal history.
Go to Profile#282
A. W. B. Simpson
#17627
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Alfred William Brian Simpson, QC , JP, FBA usually referred to as Brian Simpson and publishing as A. W. Brian Simpson, was a British legal historian and legal philosopher. At the time of his retirement, he was Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
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Raúl Zaffaroni
#11257
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni is a former Argentine polititian and judge. He served as a member of the Supreme Court of Argentina from 2003 until 2015, when he resigned due to age restrictions to hold the position. He subsequently served in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 2016 to 2022.
Go to Profile#284
Rosa Brooks
#6380
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Rosa Brooks is an American law professor, journalist, author and commentator on foreign policy, U.S. politics and criminal justice. She is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. Brooks is also an adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. From April 2009 to July 2011, Brooks was a counselor to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy.
Go to Profile#285
Elyn Saks
#5250
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Elyn R. Saks is associate dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School, an expert in mental health law, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner. Saks lives with schizophrenia and has written about her experience with the illness in her award-winning best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold, published by Hyperion Books in 2007. She is also a cancer survivor.
Go to Profile#286
Hugh Collins
#12519
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Hugh Collins, is emeritus Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College. He retains the former title as emeritus after Timothy Endicott took up the professorship on 1 July 2020.
Go to Profile#287
Brian Mulroney
#2424
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Martin Brian Mulroney is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Born in the eastern Quebec city of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney studied political science and law. He then moved to Montreal and gained prominence as a labour lawyer. After placing third in the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership election, he was appointed president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada in 1977. He held that post until 1983, when he successfully became leader of the Progressive Conservatives. He then led the party to a landslide victory in the ...
Go to Profile#288
C. Boyden Gray
#8884
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
Clayland Boyden Gray was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as White House Counsel from 1981 to 1993 and as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union from 2006 to 2007. He was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C.–based law firm Boyden Gray & Associates LLP.
Go to Profile#289
Emmet G. Sullivan
#7976
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Emmet Gael Sullivan is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Howard University. He worked in private practice for more than a decade at Houston & Gardner, becoming a name partner in 1980. He was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals as an Associate Judge in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, and to the federal bench in 1994 by Preside...
Go to Profile#290
Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade
#12001
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade was a Brazilian jurist and international judge. He was appointed as judge of the International Court of Justice from 6 February 2009. He was reelected to the Court in December 2017, and took office for his second term on 6 February 2018, serving until his death in 2022.
Go to Profile#291
Louise Charron
#12451
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Louise Charron, is a Canadian jurist. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in October, 2004, and is the first native-born Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court judge. Born in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, Charron received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University in 1972, her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Ottawa in 1975, and was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1977. She practiced civil litigation before joining the Crown Attorney's office in 1980. She then became a law professor at the University of Ottawa.
Go to Profile#292
Yale Kamisar
#20748
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Yale Kamisar was an American legal scholar and writer who was the Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. A "nationally recognized authority on constitutional law and criminal procedure", Kamisar is known as the "father of Miranda" for his influential role in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona .
Go to Profile#293
Zephyr Teachout
#10249
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Zephyr Rain Teachout is an American attorney, author, political candidate, and associate professor of law at Fordham University. In 2014, Teachout ran for the Democratic Party nomination for governor of New York and lost to incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo, receiving 34% of the primary vote. In 2016, Teachout was a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 19th congressional district. Teachout won the Democratic primary before losing to Republican John Faso. In 2018, Teachout was a candidate for New York State attorney general in the 2018 elections but lost the Democratic nomination to Letitia James.
Go to Profile#294
Francis Gurry
#18775
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Francis Gerard Gurry is an Australian lawyer who served as the fourth director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization from 2008 to 2020. During that time, he was also the secretary-general of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants . Gurry also served as a deputy director general of WIPO from 2003 to 2008.
Go to Profile#295
Gillian Triggs
#9172
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Gillian Doreen Triggs is an Australian academic specialising in public international law. In 2019, she was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. In this capacity, she will serve as the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection in the team of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
Go to Profile#296
Kermit Roosevelt III
#14714
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, and legal scholar. He is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Go to Profile#297
Nadine Strossen
#10324
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#298
Peter Lerche
#26591
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Peter Lerche was a German jurist. Between 1964 and 1996 he held a chair for constitutional law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. His research interests also included media law. Born in Leitmeritz, Sudetenland, Lerche studied law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, earning his Habilitation in 1958 under supervision of Theodor Maunz. He accepted a chair at the Free University of Berlin in 1961, before joining the faculty at LMU in 1964.
Go to Profile#299
Thomas Hoeren
#18205
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Thomas Hoeren is a German law professor and a former Court of appeal judge with focus on Information and Media Law. Career Studies Thomas Hoeren studied Theology and Law at the Universities of Tübingen, Münster and London Guildhall University from 1980 to 1987. In 1986 he graduated from Theology in Münster. From October 1986 to May 1988 he wrote his doctorate's thesis in IT Law at the University of Münster . In May 1994, Thomas Hoeren qualified as a professor of Civil Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Münster .
Go to Profile#300
Francis Boyle
#9401
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Francis Anthony Boyle is an American human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He has served as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina and has supported the rights of Palestinians and indigenous peoples.
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