Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Law,

#2601

Brian Fitzgerald

#82637

Overall Influence

Brian Fitzgerald is an Australian legal academic and barrister. He is an intellectual property and information technology/internet lawyer who has pioneered the teaching of internet/cyber law in Australia. Fitzgerald was a specialist research professor at the Queensland University of Technology until February 2012, when he became the inaugural executive dean of law at the Australian Catholic University's Faculty of Law and Business.

#2602

Lee Tai-young

#29799

Overall Influence

1914 - 1998 (84 years)

Lee Tai-young , also spelled Yi T'ai Yǒng, was Korea's first female lawyer [other sources refer to her as the first female lawyer in South Korea]. She was also the founder of the country's first legal aide centre. She fought for women's rights all through her career. Her often mentioned refrain was, "No society can or will prosper without the cooperation of women." Her dedication to law also got her the epithet "the woman judge."

#2603

Paul Williams

#54246

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Paul Daniel Williams is a British general practitioner and former Labour Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament for Stockton South from 2017 to 2019, when he lost his seat to the Conservative candidate Matt Vickers in the 2019 general election. In May 2021, Williams stood as the Labour Party candidate in the 2021 Hartlepool by-election but lost to the Conservative candidate Jill Mortimer.

#2604

Erling Selvig

#93871

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Erling Christian Øverland Selvig is a Norwegian legal scholar and judge. He was born in Egge as a son of manager Sverre Arthur Birger Selvig and Sigfrid Øverland . He finished his secondary education in Levanger in 1950 and graduated with the cand.jur. degree at the University of Oslo in 1957. He was hired as a research assistant in the same year, and in 1959 he took the Master of Comparative Law degree at the University of Michigan. His first marriage lasted from 1957 to 1981, the second to deputy under-secretary of state Kirsten Ullbæk Petersen started in 1984.

#2605

Gary N. Horlick

#145823

Overall Influence

#2606

Toby J. Heytens

Toby J. Heytens

#133855

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Toby Jay Heytens is an American attorney and law professor who is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He served as the solicitor general of Virginia from 2018 to 2021.

#2607

James Mallory

#77161

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

James Russell Mallory was a Canadian academic and constitutionalal expert. Career His radio interview after the 1957 federal election, influenced Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent to allow John Diefenbaker to become the next Prime Minister. He was also consulted by Governor-General Ed Schreyer after the minority Progressive Conservative government led by Prime Minister Joe Clark was defeated on a motion of no confidence in the Commons.

#2608

Mark A. Lemley

#145987

Overall Influence

#2609

Rosa Freedman

#51016

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Rosa Anne Freedman, who has written as Rosa Davis, is a British professor of law, conflict, and global development at the University of Reading. Her principal area of research is the activities of the United Nations as they relate to human rights. She has given evidence before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom about the human rights work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and to the Scottish Government relating to gender questions on the national census.

#2610

Mireille Hildebrandt

#86720

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Mireille Hildebrandt is a Dutch lawyer and philosopher who works at the intersection of law and computer science. She is the Research Professor on 'Interfacing Law and Technology' at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and holds the Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen.

#2611

Jacobus Hubertus van Boom

#146081

Overall Influence

1937 - 2004 (67 years)

#2612

Shelley Berkley

#73539

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Rochelle "Shelley" Berkley is an American businesswoman, politician and attorney who served as the U.S. Representative for from 1999 to 2013. In 2012, she was the unsuccessful Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate. She is a member of the Democratic Party, and is currently running in the upcoming 2024 Las Vegas Mayoral Election.

#2613

Michael Slinger

#98466

Overall Influence

Michael Slinger is the Associate Dean for Information Services and Technology, Director of the Legal Information Center, and Professor of Law at the Widener University School of Law. He previously spent 13 years as Associate Dean and Director of the Law Library at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University. He is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Slinger received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, M.L.S. from University of South Carolina and J.D. from Duquesne University.

#2614

Jennifer A. Pietenpol

#146443

Overall Influence

#2615

David J. McCarthy Jr.

#74228

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

David J. McCarthy Jr. is Dean Emeritus of the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, USA from 1975 to 1983. McCarthy received a bachelor's degree from Fairfield University, and a J.D. J.D., LL.M., and an honorary LL.D. from Georgetown, where he was managing editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.

#2616

Cynthia Stephens

#91431

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Cynthia Diane Stephens is an American attorney and jurist serving as a judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals for the First District. Education Stephens earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1971 and a Juris Doctor from the Emory University School of Law in 1976.

#2617

Cho Kuk

#75914

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Cho Kuk is a South Korean jurist and politician. He was the Senior Secretary to the President for Civil Affairs from 2017 to 2019 in the Moon Jae-in Cabinet. On 9 September 2019, President Moon Jae-in appointed Cho as Minister of Justice, replacing the incumbent Park Sang-ki.

#2618

Paul Giannelli

#124717

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Paul Giannelli is an American lawyer, consultant and law professor. He is a leading expert on scientific and forensic evidence. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor and the Albert J. Weatherhead III & Richard W. Weatherhead Professor Emeritus of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

#2619

Laura A. Dickinson

#122593

Overall Influence

Laura Anne Dickinson is the Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law at George Washington University School of Law. She is the author of the 2011 book Outsourcing War and Peace, which discusses the current trend in the United States towards privatization of the military.

#2620

Catherine Cortez Masto

#77186

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Catherine Marie Cortez Masto is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Nevada, a seat she has held since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Cortez Masto served as the 32nd attorney general of Nevada from 2007 to 2015.

#2621

Raymond Nimmer

#116596

Overall Influence

1944 - 2018 (74 years)

Raymond Theodore Nimmer was an attorney and former dean of the University of Houston Law Center in Houston, Texas. Biography Education and early life Raymond T. Nimmer was born in Illinois May 2, 1944. He received a B.A. in mathematics in 1966 from Valparaiso University. He received a J.D. degree which was awarded with distinction in 1968 from Valparaiso University Law School

#2622

Rosario Isasi

#64967

Overall Influence

Rosario Isasi is a health and human rights attorney, whose research and work focuses on the regulation of human genetic technologies. Early life and career Isasi holds a J.D. from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and a Master of Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health .

#2623

John Derek

#57681

Overall Influence

1926 - 1998 (72 years)

John Derek was an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer and photographer. He appeared in such films as Knock on Any Door, All the King's Men , and Rogues of Sherwood Forest . Early life John Derek was born Derek Delevan Harris in Hollywood, California, on August 12, 1926. His parents were actor/director Lawson Harris and actress Dolores Johnson.

#2624

Bartosz Brożek

#83430

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Bartosz Paweł Brożek is a Polish philosopher and jurist whose main research interests are in philosophy of law, philosophy of science, logic and cognitive science. He is currently professor of jurisprudence at the Jagiellonian University and vice dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration, as well as a director of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Kraków. Author or co-author of more than 20 book monographs and more than 70 scientific papers. He holds PhDs in both law and philosophy , habilitation in law and the title of full professor .

#2625

Chuka Umunna

#56577

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Chuka Harrison Umunna is a British businessman and former politician who served as Member of Parliament for Streatham from 2010 until 2019. A former member of the Labour Party, he was part of the Shadow Cabinet from 2011 to 2015. He left Labour in February 2019, when he resigned to form The Independent Group, later Change UK, along with six other MPs. Later in 2019, he left Change UK and, after a short time as an independent MP, joined the Liberal Democrats. In the 2019 general election, he was unsuccessful in being re-elected as an MP and did not return to the House of Commons.

#2626

Adrienne Nelson

#97814

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Adrienne Camille Nelson is an American lawyer who is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. She previously served as a judge on the Multnomah County Circuit Court from 2006 to 2018 and a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court from 2018 to 2023.

#2627

David A Williams

#147586

Overall Influence

#2628

Tomas Davulis

#112655

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Tomas Davulis is a Lithuanian labour law scholar, professor at Vilnius University and Dean of Vilnius University Faculty of Law. Education From 1993 to 1998, he attended the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University, specialising in Labour Law and Social Security. The title of his paper was Collective Agreements under German Law. From 2000 to 2001, he attended the Faculty of Law of the University of Freiburg in Germany, pursuing his Legum Magister . The title of his thesis was Impact of the European Labour Law on the Law of EU-Candidate Countries: Case Lithuania. He graduated summa cum laude. From 2000 to 2002, he was a doctoral student at Vilnius University.

#2629

Patrick Woolley

#131692

Overall Influence

Patrick Woolley is an American legal scholar working as the Beck, Redden & Secrest Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Education Woolley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

#2630

Thomas Faunce

#116224

Overall Influence

1958 - 2019 (61 years)

Thomas Faunce was a professor at the Australian National University , Canberra, Australia. He practiced both law and medicine, and his professorship was a joint one, being in both the ANU College of Law and Medical School. His research spanned across health law, bioethics, the regulatory governance of pharmaceutical industry and artificial photosynthesis in addressing environment sustainability issues. He was awarded research funding from the Australian Research Council for several Discovery Projects, and in 2009 was awarded a Future Fellowship to study nanotechnology and global public hea...

#2631

Jonathan Montgomery

#78039

Overall Influence

Sir Jonathan Robert Montgomery is a British legal scholar who specialises in health care law. He is Professor of Health Care Law at University College London. Professor Montgomery was chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the leading UK bioethics committee, from 2012 to 2017. He was appointed Chair of the Health Research Authority in 2012. He was replaced by Professor Sir Terence Stephenson on 1 September 2019.

#2632

Sohail Inayatullah

Sohail Inayatullah

#26033

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Sohail Inayatullah is a Pakistani-born Australian academic, futures studies researcher and a professor at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan. Biography Born in 1958 in Lahore, Pakistan, to a father who worked as a researcher for the United Nations and a Sufi mother, he grew up in numerous countries including the United States, Switzerland and Malaysia. His main influences include James Dator, Johan Galtung, William Irwin Thompson and in particular P. R. Sarkar.

#2633

Stewart Jay

#141100

Overall Influence

Stewart Jay holds the Pendleton Miller chair in law at the University of Washington School of Law, where he has taught since 1980. Prior to joining the UW faculty, he taught at the University of North Carolina for two years. Before entering teaching, Professor Jay clerked for two years, first with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger. During 1984-85 he was a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law and constitutional history. He was one of the ...

#2634

Anders Perner

#147778

Overall Influence

#2635

Angela M. Banks

#112427

Overall Influence

Angela M. Banks is an American lawyer and legal academic specialized in immigration and citizenship. She is the Charles J. Merriam distinguished professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. In 2020, Banks was elected Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

#2636

Sunil S. Badve

#147974

Overall Influence

#2637

Nathalie Martin

#119748

Overall Influence

Nathalie Martin is the Frederick M. Hart Chair in Consumer and Clinical Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Bankruptcy as well as a former resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute and a former dean of faculty of the American Board of Certification, which writes the tests used to certify bankruptcy attorneys. She is also a regular contributor to Credit Slips, a blog on debtor creditor issues.

#2638

Samuel Epstein

#74952

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Samuel Seymour Epstein was a physician and, at the time of his death, professor emeritus of environmental and occupational health at the School of Public Health of the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is known for his contributions on avoidable causes of cancer, for which he was given the Right Livelihood Award in 1998. His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

#2639

Hiromichi Okuda

#148248

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

#2640

G. Scott Hubbard

G. Scott Hubbard

#24249

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

G. Scott Hubbard is a physicist who has been engaged in space-related research as well as program, project and executive management for more than 45 years including 20 years with NASA, culminating as director of NASA's Ames Research Center. As of 2012, Hubbard chairs SpaceX Safety Advisory Panel, he previously served as the NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, was NASA's first Mars program director and restructured the Mars program in the wake of mission failures.

#2641

Kamala Sankaran

#102868

Overall Influence

Kamala Sankaran is a legal academic, and from 2016, the vice-chancellor of Tamil Nadu National Law University. She has served as a member of the Working Group on Migration, set up by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Government of India; and on the Delhi High Court Legal Service Committee and the Delhi State Legal Services Authority.

#2642

Andrew John Ashworth

#148409

Overall Influence

#2643

George F. Curtis

#134404

Overall Influence

1906 - 2005 (99 years)

George Fredrick Curtis , was the founding dean of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. Early life and career Born 1906 in Stogumber, England, Curtis came to Canada in 1913. He attended Moose Jaw Collegiate and then earned his law degree at the University of Saskatchewan in 1927, being awarded the Governor-General's Gold Medal on graduation. He then went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence in 1930 and his BCL in 1931, both with first class honours.

#2644

Gagandeep Kang

#15534

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Gagandeep Kang FRS is an Indian microbiologist and virologist who is the Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India and from August 2016 to July 2020 was executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Her major research focus is on viral infections in children, and the testing of rotaviral vaccines. She also works on other enteric infections and their consequences when children are infected in early life, sanitation and water safety.

#2645

David Harker

#13819

Overall Influence

1906 - 1991 (85 years)

David Harker was an American medical researcher who according to The New York Times was "a pioneer in the use of X-rays to decipher the structure of critical substances in the life process of cells".

#2646

Brian Coote

#126978

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Brian Coote was a New Zealand legal academic. He wrote the influential book Exception Clauses, published in 1964, and served as dean of the law faculty at the University of Auckland from 1983 to 1987.

#2647

Ian Scott

#98418

Overall Influence

1934 - 2006 (72 years)

Ian Gilmour Scott was a Canadian politician and lawyer. He was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1985 to 1992 who represented the downtown Toronto ridings of St. David and St. George—St. David. He was a cabinet minister in the government of David Peterson serving as Attorney General of Ontario and Solicitor General. Along with Robert Nixon and Sean Conway, he was considered to be "the intellectual heart and soul" of the Peterson cabinet.

#2648

Peter Rheinstein

Peter Rheinstein

#50874

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Peter Howard Rheinstein is an American physician, lawyer, author, and administrator . He was an official of the Food and Drug Administration 1974-1999. Education Rheinstein, a General Motors Scholar, received a B.A. with high honors from Michigan State University in 1963, an M.S. in mathematics from Michigan State University in 1964, an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1967, and a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1973. At Michigan State University Rheinstein was noted for his facility in mathematics.

#2649

Leo Katz

#110282

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Leo Katz is an American lawyer and the Frank Carano Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Biography Katz is the son of the historian Friedrich Katz and Jana Badian Katz. Katz earned his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1979. He earned both a master's degree in economics from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1982. He graduated with honors and earned the Order of the Coif.

#2650

Thomas Nazario

#102708

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Thomas Albert Nazario is an American lawyer, author and international children's rights advocate. He is an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, as well as founder and president of the San Francisco-based The Forgotten International, and previously program director of University of San Francisco's Tibetan Children Education Project. He has been an inspector for the United Nations and a consultant for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He has authored four books on children'...

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