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,
#301
Dennis J. Hutchinson
#23827
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Dennis J. Hutchinson is an American legal scholar. After beginning his teaching career at the Georgetown University Law Center, Hutchinson joined the University of Chicago Law School in 1981. Currently, he is the William Rainey Harper Professor at the University of Chicago, a senior lecturer in law, and master of the undergraduate college's New Collegiate Division where he directs the Law, Letters, and Society program. His interests primarily lie in the field constitutional law, paying special attention to issues of race. He is best known within the legal community at large for his work as ed...
Go to Profile#302
Patrick Fitzgerald
#4209
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Patrick J. Fitzgerald is an American lawyer and partner at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom since October 2012. For more than a decade, until June 30, 2012, Fitzgerald was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Prior to his appointment, he served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1988 to 2001, and as Chief of the Organized Crime-Terrorism Unit since December 1995, where he participated in the prosecutions of Osama bin Laden, Abdel Rahman, and Ramzi Yousef.
Go to Profile#303
Annelise Riles
#13211
Overall Influence
Annelise Riles is an interdisciplinary anthropologist and legal scholar. She is the executive director of the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University, contributing to Northwestern's interdisciplinary programs and research on globally relevant topics. Riles is also the associate provost for global affairs and a professor of law and anthropology.
Go to Profile#304
Harold J. Berman
#18974
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Harold Joseph Berman was an American legal scholar who was an expert in comparative, international and Soviet/Russian law as well as legal history, philosophy of law and the intersection of law and religion. He was a law professor at Harvard Law School and Emory University School of Law for more than sixty years, and held the James Barr Ames Professorship of Law at Harvard before he was appointed as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory. He has been described as "one of the great polymaths of American legal education."
Go to Profile#305
Jonathan R. Macey
#16119
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Jonathan R. Macey is an American legal scholar who serves as the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance and Securities Law at Yale Law School. Macey is the 4th most cited legal scholar ever in the world in the field of corporate law.
Go to Profile#306
Mary Anne Franks
#13427
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Mary Anne Franks is an American legal scholar, author, activist, and media commentator. She is a professor of law and the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington University Law School, where her areas of expertise and teaching include First Amendment law, Second Amendment law, criminal law, criminal procedure, family law, and law and technology. She also serves as President and Legislative and Technology Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University Law School, Professor Franks was the Michael R.
Go to Profile#307
Robert Weisberg
#19209
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Robert I. Weisberg is an American lawyer. He is an Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as a leading scholar in the law and literature movement.
Go to Profile#308
Diane Wood
#13134
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute, a senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Go to Profile#309
Eva Cantarella
#14224
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Eva Cantarella is an Italian classicist. She is professor of Roman law and ancient Greek law at the University of Milan, and has served as Dean of the Law School at the University of Camerino. Biography Cantarella is known for examining ancient law by relating it to modern legal issues through law and society perspective. She has researched subjects involving the legal and social history of sexuality, women's conditions, criminal law and capital punishment.
Go to Profile#310
Bernard Harcourt
#3063
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Bernard E. Harcourt is an American critical theorist with a specialization in the area of punishment, surveillance, legal and political theory, and political economy. He also does pro-bono legal work on human rights issues.
Go to Profile#311
Phillip E. Johnson
#2187
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Phillip E. Johnson was a UC Berkeley law professor, opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement, author of the "Wedge strategy" and co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture . He described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement". He was a critic of Darwinism, which he described as "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection". The wedge strategy aims to change public opinion and scientific consensus, and seeks to convince the scientific community to allow a role for theism, or causes beyond naturalistic explanation, in scientific discourse.
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William W. Fisher
#18890
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
William "Terry" W. Fisher III is the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His primary research and teaching areas are intellectual property law and legal history.
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Goodwin Liu
#13454
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Goodwin Hon Liu is an American lawyer, educator and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California. Before his appointment by California Governor Jerry Brown, Liu was Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law . Liu has been recognized for his writing on constitutional law, education policy, civil rights, and the Supreme Court.
Go to Profile#314
William G. Young
#20104
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
William Glover Young is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Early life and career Born in Huntington, New York, Young received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Harvard University in 1962. He received a Bachelor of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1967. He was a Captain in the United States Army from 1962 to 1964. He was a law clerk for Chief Justice Raymond S. Wilkins of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1967 to 1968.
Go to Profile#315
Ferdinand Kirchhof
#24279
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ferdinand Kirchhof is a German judge, jurisprudent and tax law expert. Early career Kirchhof was born in Osnabrück. He served as expert member of the Commission on the Reform of the Federal System of Government , established by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat between 2003 and 2004. From 2003 until 2007, he was a member of the Constitutional Court of Baden-Württemberg.
Go to Profile#316
Jonathan H. Adler
#15537
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Jonathan H. Adler is an American legal commentator and law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He has been recognized as one of the most cited professors in the field of environmental law. His research is also credited with inspiring litigation that challenged the Obama Administration's implementation of the Affordable Care Act, resulting in the Supreme Court's decision in King v. Burwell.
Go to Profile#317
George P. Fletcher
#16937
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
George P. Fletcher is the Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University School of Law. Fletcher attended Cornell University from 1956 to 1959, studying mathematics and Russian. He received a B.A. in 1960 from University of California, Berkeley and his J.D. in 1964 from the University of Chicago. He studied at the University of Freiburg from 1964 to 1965 and received a Masters in Comparative Law in 1965 from the University of Chicago. He taught at the law schools of the University of Florida, University of Washington, and Boston College and then UCLA, from 1969 to 1983. Since then ...
Go to Profile#318
Ian Ayres
#10769
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ian Ayres is an American lawyer and economist. Ayres is a professor at the Yale Law School and at the Yale School of Management. Early life and education Ayres grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where they graduated from Pembroke Country Day School in 1977. They played varsity basketball, ran cross country, and served as executive editor of their high school newspaper. Ayres wrote an op-ed piece their senior year called "Black Like Me" , a controversial piece detailing the consequences of their checking the "African- American" box for race on his PSAT, which led to consideration for academic awards.
Go to Profile#319
Rudolf Schlesinger
#21644
Overall Influence
1909 - 1996 (87 years)
Rudolf Berthold Schlesinger was a German American legal scholar known for his contributions to the study of comparative law, a discipline that examines the differences and similarities among the legal systems of nations.
Go to Profile#320
John Warwick Montgomery
#2869
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
John Warwick Montgomery is a lawyer, professor, Lutheran theologian, and author living in France. He was born in Warsaw, New York, United States. Montgomery maintains multiple citizenship in the United States, United Kingdom and France. From 2014 to 2017, he was Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin. He is currently Professor-At-Large, 1517: The Legacy Project. He is named Avocat honoraire, Barreau de Paris , after 20 years in French legal practise. He continues to work as a barrister specializing in religious freedom cases in international Human Ri...
Go to Profile#321
Carl E. Stewart
#17868
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Carl E. Stewart is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, and previously sat as a judge of the Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal from 1985 to 1994.
Go to Profile#322
Danielle Citron
#15530
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Danielle Keats Citron is a Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches information privacy, free expression, and civil rights law. Citron is the author of "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age" and "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace" . She also serves as the Vice President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, an organization which provides assistance and legislative support to victims of online abuse. Prior to joining UVA Law, Citron was an Austin B. Fletcher Distingu...
Go to Profile#323
Payam Akhavan
#11195
Overall Influence
Payam Akhavan is an Iranian-born lawyer. He is nominated as a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague by Bangladesh. He is a Senior Fellow at Massey College at the University of Toronto and is a visiting adjunct at its Faculty of Law.
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Karl Klare
#22665
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Karl E. Klare is a Matthews Distinguished University Professor of labor and employment law and legal theory at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts, and the current coordinator of the International Network on Transformative Employment and Labor Law . He has written and lectured extensively on labor and employment issues, and is a notable proponent of the critical legal studies movement.
Go to Profile#325
Rachel Barkow
#20608
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Rachel Elise Barkow is an American professor of law at the New York University School of Law. She is also faculty director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Her scholarship focuses on administrative and criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative law to the administration of criminal justice. In 2007, Barkow won the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award at NYU. In the fall of 2008, she served as the Beneficial Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Go to Profile#326
Philip Hamburger
#23627
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Philip Hamburger is an American legal scholar. Hamburger holds a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University . Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at the Columbia University School of Law. He is a legal historian and a scholar of constitutional law. Before moving to Columbia, Hamburger was John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was also director of the Bigelow Program and the Legal History Program. He was previously Oswald Symyster Colclough Research Professor at George Washington University Law School and, before that, he taught at the University of Connecticut Law School.
Go to Profile#327
John McGinnis
#11611
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
John Oldham McGinnis is a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and author of over 90 academic and popular articles and essays. His popular writings have been published in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Policy Review.
Go to Profile#328
Megyn Kelly
#2354
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Megyn Marie Kelly is an American journalist and media personality. She currently hosts a talk show and podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, that airs live daily on SiriusXM. She was a talk show host at Fox News from 2004 to 2017 and a host and correspondent with NBC News from 2017 to 2018. She is also active in posting to her Instagram page and YouTube channel.
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Jedediah Purdy
#17575
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Jedediah Spenser Purdy is an American legal scholar and cultural commentator. In 2022 he became the Raphael Lemkin Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law, where he teaches courses on Property and Past and Future of Capitalist Democracy. From 2018 to 2022 he was William S. Beinecke Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, teaching courses on American Constitutional Law, Constitutional Law and Democracy and its Crisis. He previously taught at Duke University School of Law from 2004 to 2018.
Go to Profile#330
Graham Virgo
#22412
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Graham John Virgo is an English legal academic, barrister and university administrator, who is Professor of English Private Law at the University of Cambridge and Master of Downing College, Cambridge. He is frequently cited in the English courts and those of other common law jurisdictions, and known for his contributions to the law of restitution and the teaching of law. He was previously Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge and assumed the role of Master of Downing College, Cambridge, on 1 October 2023.
Go to Profile#331
Jessica Levinson
#22047
Overall Influence
Jessica Levinson is an American law professor and political commentator. Levinson teaches at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she lectures in the areas of constitutional law, election law and privacy torts.
Go to Profile#332
Cheryl Harris
#12511
Overall Influence
Cheryl I. Harris is a critical race theorist and professor of civil rights and civil liberties at the UCLA School of Law. Harris is widely known for "Whiteness as Property", published in the June 1993 edition of the Harvard Law Review. In the paper, Harris describes the white racial identity and the value it confers in a slave society.
Go to Profile#333
Anatoly Kucherena
#8383
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Anatoly Grigorievich Kucherena is a Russian attorney, public figure, Doctor of Law, and professor. From mid-2013, Kucherena has represented former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's interests in the Russian Federation. Kucherena continues to represent Snowden, pro bono, on an occasional basis. In 2013, according to Izvestia, he was known as a person who spoke in favour of the banning of anonymizer software: advocating the prosecution of its development, distribution and usage by including it in the "malware" software category .
Go to Profile#334
Richard Danzig
#6029
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Richard Jeffrey Danzig is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 71st Secretary of the Navy under President Bill Clinton. He served as an advisor of the President Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and was later the chairman of the national security think-tank, the Center for a New American Security.
Go to Profile#335
J. Lee Rankin
#15965
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
James Lee Rankin was the 31st United States Solicitor General. Early life Rankin was born in Hartington, Nebraska, the son of Herman P. and Lois Gable Rankin. He attended public schools and earned his undergraduate and law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law. In 1930 Rankin was admitted to the Nebraska bar and began practicing law in Lincoln. In 1935, he became a partner at his firm, where he worked for more than 20 years.
Go to Profile#336
Saul Levmore
#22672
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law, and former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School. Early life Saul Levmore was born in 1953 in New York City. In 1973, he earned a B.A. from Columbia University, where William Vickrey supervised his thesis. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1978; and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980. While at Yale, he taught a popular introductory economics course nicknamed "Laughs and Graphs".
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Shon Hopwood
#18313
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Shon Robert Hopwood is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Hopwood became well-known as a jailhouse lawyer who served time in prison for bank robbery. While in prison, he started spending time in the law library, and became an accomplished United States Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left in 2009.
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Anthony Julius
#4531
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Anthony Robert Julius is a British solicitor advocate known for being Diana, Princess of Wales' divorce lawyer and for representing Deborah Lipstadt. He is a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Go to Profile#339
Nahum Rakover
#27727
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Nahum Rakover , professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University, is an Israeli former deputy attorney general. Rakover is a leading researcher in the application of traditional Jewish rabbinic law to Israel's state legal system.
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Morton Horwitz
#16684
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Morton J. Horwitz is an American legal historian and law professor at Harvard Law School. The recent past dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, relates that during her time at law school, students often nicknamed him as "Mort the Tort" since he taught the first-year subject Torts.
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Rebecca Tushnet
#18622
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Rebecca Tushnet is an American legal scholar. She serves as the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School. Her scholarship focuses on copyright, trademark, First Amendment, and false advertising.
Go to Profile#342
Menachem Mautner
#26619
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Menachem Mautner is an Israeli professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence at Tel Aviv University. In 2000–2002, he was Dean of the Faculty of Law. Biography Menachem Mautner obtained a J.S.D. from Yale Law School. Mautner teaches at Tel Aviv University courses in the areas of contract law, law and culture and multiculturalism.
Go to Profile#343
Paolo Maddalena
#21217
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Paolo Maddalena is an Italian magistrate and academic, Judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy from 2002 to 2011. Biography Academic career After graduating in 1958, Maddalena began his academic activity in the field of Roman law, as an assistant to jurist Antonio Guarino. A free lecturer in Roman law institutions since 1971, after his entry into the judiciary, Maddalena shifted his interests towards administrative and constitutional law.
Go to Profile#344
Peter Edelman
#11234
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Peter Benjamin Edelman is an American legal scholar. He is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of poverty, welfare, juvenile justice, and constitutional law. He worked as an aide for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and in the Clinton Administration, where he resigned to protest Bill Clinton's signing the welfare reform legislation. Edelman was one of the founders and president of the board of the New Israel Fund.
Go to Profile#345
Patricia J. Williams
#7046
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system. Early life Williams received her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1972, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975.
Go to Profile#346
Timothy Endicott
#15830
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Timothy Endicott is a Canadian legal scholar and philosopher specializing in constitutional law and language and law. He is the Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#347
Erkki Ruoslahti
#19497
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Erkki Ruoslahti is a cancer researcher and distinguished professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He moved from Finland to the United States in 1976. Ruoslahti made seminal contributions to biology of extracellular matrix and its receptors. He was one of the discoverers of fibronectin, an adhesion molecule and component of extracellular matrices, and he subsequently identified and cloned a number of other extracellular matrix components and adhesion molecules. In 1984, he identified the sequence within fibronectin that mediates cell attachment, called RGD for the amino...
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Bernardo Sepúlveda Amor
#15323
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Bernardo Sepúlveda Amor is a Mexican diplomat and jurist. He was Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the 1980s under President Miguel de la Madrid and is a former judge of the International Court of Justice.
Go to Profile#349
Asif Nazrul
#25301
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Md. Nazrul Islam, better known as Asif Nazrul, is a Bangladeshi writer, novelist, columnist, political commentator, and a professor of law at the University of Dhaka. Renowned for his bold critique of Bangladeshi politics, Nazrul wrote more than ten novels and nonfiction books.
Go to Profile#350
Nils Melzer
#11695
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Nils Melzer is a Swiss academic, author, and practitioner in the field of international law. From 2016 until 2022, Melzer was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. He is a professor of international law at the University of Glasgow. From 2011-2013, he was Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Melzer has criticised the governments of the U.S., the U.K., Ecuador and Sweden over their treatment of Julian Assange.
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