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.
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List of the most influential people in Law,
#3951
Burton K. Wheeler
1882 - 1975 (93 years)
Burton Kendall Wheeler was an attorney and an American politician of the Democratic Party in Montana, which he represented as a United States senator from 1923 until 1947. Born in Massachusetts, Wheeler began practicing law in Montana almost by chance, after losing his belongings while en route to Seattle. As the U.S. Attorney for Montana, he became known for his criticism of the Sedition Act of 1918 and defense of civil liberties during World War I. An independent Democrat who initially represented the progressive wing of the party, he received support from Montana's labor unions in his elec...
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William Dameron Guthrie
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
William Dameron Guthrie was an American lawyer and educator. Biography William Dameron Guthrie was born in San Francisco, California on February 3, 1859. He was educated in Paris, in England, and at the Columbia Law School . In his practice before the United States Supreme Court he argued the income tax, California irrigation, Illinois inheritance tax, oleomargarine, and Kansas City stockyardss rate cases. He was a William L. Storrs lecturer at Yale University in 1907-08 and was Ruggles Professor of Constitutional Law at Columbia University from 1909 to 1922. Besides his contributions to peri...
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F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, was a British Conservative politician and barrister who attained high office in the early 20th century, in particular as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was a skilled orator, noted for his staunch opposition to Irish nationalism, his wit, pugnacious views, and hard living and drinking. He is perhaps best remembered today as Winston Churchill's greatest personal and political friend until Birkenhead's death aged 58 from pneumonia caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
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Alexander Pearce Higgins
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Alexander Pearce Higgins was a British international law scholar. He was Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge , President of the Institut de Droit International , and a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration .
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John L. McClellan
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
John Little McClellan was an American lawyer and segregationist politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from Arkansas. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He is the longest-serving senator in Arkansas history.
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Martin Hübner
1723 - 1795 (72 years)
Martin Hübner was a Danish jurist noted for his contributions to international law. Born in Hannover and brought up in Danemark, Hübner studied law there and was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1761. Later he was a high government official.
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Sister Nivedita
1867 - 1911 (44 years)
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
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Ernst Heymann
1870 - 1946 (76 years)
Ernst Heymann was a German jurist from Berlin. In 1889, he put on Breslauer Mary Magdalene School from the matriculation examination. He then studied law at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Breslau until 1892. Heymann was appointed professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin in 1899. In 1902, he was appointed to the Chair of Law at the Albertus University of Königsberg, two years later, he moved to the University of Marburg. In 1914, he returned to Berlin at the Friedrich Wilhelm University.
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Lionel Murphy
1922 - 1986 (64 years)
Lionel Keith Murphy QC was an Australian politician, barrister, and judge. He was a Senator for New South Wales from 1962 to 1975, serving as Attorney-General in the Whitlam government, and then sat on the High Court from 1975 until his death.
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Ioaniky Malinovsky
1868 - 1932 (64 years)
Ioaniky Alekseyevich Malinovsky was a jurist and historian of law active in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Biography Education Malinovsky was born in 1868 in Ostrog, in the family of an artisan. In his hometown he studied at the Ostrog gymnasium, later moving to Kiev to study at the Pavlo Galagan Collegium, from which he graduated in 1888. In 1892 he completed his studies in law at the St. Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev.
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Paul Joseph von Riegger
1705 - 1775 (70 years)
Paul Joseph Riegger , was an Austrian lawyer and teacher of state church law. Biography Paul Joseph Riegger taught from 1733 as a university professor in Innsbruck , and from 1753 in Vienna at the University and Theresianum. For his services, he was elevated to the hereditary nobility on 8 January 1764 by Maria Theresa as Ritter von Riegger.
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Arnold Vinnius
1588 - 1657 (69 years)
Arnold Vinnius was one of the leading jurists of the 17th century in the Netherlands. Life Vinnius was born in Monster. He attended the University of Leiden from 1603 where he read law. He gained his degree in 1612. His most important teacher was Gerardus Tuningius, who had been a student of Hugo Donellus. Vinnius aspired to an academic career, and in 1618 began teaching at the University of Leiden. He was initially not considered for promotion to a professorship as he had previously expressed pejorative views on the professors, so it was not until 1633 the position of Extraordinarius Professor Institutionum was created for him.
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Benjamin Marius Telders
1903 - 1945 (42 years)
Benjamin Marius Telders was a professor of law at Leiden University. He is known for standing up for his belief in the rule of law and civil society during the German Occupation. From 1938 he became involved in Dutch politics; he was party chairman of the Liberal State Party from 1938–1945.
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Lester B. Pearson
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson was a Canadian politician, diplomat, statesman, and scholar who served as the 14th prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968. Born in Newtonbrook, Ontario , Pearson pursued a career in the Department of External Affairs. He served as Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1944 to 1946 and secretary of state for external affairs from 1948 to 1957 under Liberal Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. He narrowly lost the bid to become secretary-general of the United Nations in 1953. However, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 fo...
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Nikolai Korkunov
1853 - 1904 (51 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Korkunov was a leading authority on constitutional law and legal sociology in the Russian Empire. His father was Mikhail Korkunov, a noted Russian historian. His sister Marie de Manacéïne was known for her pioneering studies of sleep and dreams. After Aleksandr Gradovsky's death in 1889 Korkunov held the chair in constitutional and international law at the University of Saint Petersburg.
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Nathan Ross Margold
1899 - 1947 (48 years)
Nathan Ross Margold was a Romanian-born American lawyer. He was a municipal judge in Washington, D.C., and the author of the 1933 Margold Report to promote civil rights for African-Americans through the courts. He was also a supporter of Native American civil rights and Native American sovereignty. In addition to his legal career, Margold is remembered as the father of adult film pioneer William Margold.
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Jubal Early
1816 - 1894 (78 years)
Jubal Anderson Early was an American lawyer, politician and military officer who served in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Trained at the United States Military Academy, Early resigned his United States Army commission after the Second Seminole War and his Virginia military commission after the Mexican–American War, in both cases to practice law and participate in politics. Accepting a Virginia and later Confederate military commission as the American Civil War began, Early fought in the Eastern Theater throughout the conflict. He commanded a division under Generals Stonewall Jackson and Richard S.
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Bertold Eisner
1875 - 1956 (81 years)
Bertold Eisner was a Croatian Jewish law professor at the University of Zagreb, pioneer of the Croatian Jurisprudence and writer. Biography Eisner was born in Korolówka, Galicia in 1875. In Černovice, Czech Republic, he finished high school and graduated from the Faculty of Law. In 1899, Eisner received his doctoral degree in law. After his education he moved to Vienna, where he worked as a court clerk. In the mid 1900, due to financial difficulties, Eisner moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked at the Travnik, Jajce, Prijedor and Ključ courts of law. In 1933, Eisner was elected as a regular professor at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law.
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Herennius Modestinus
201 - 201 (0 years)
Herennius Modestinus, or simply Modestinus, was a civil servant and a celebrated Roman jurist, a student of Ulpian who flourished about 250 AD. He appears to have been a native of one of the Greek-speaking provinces, or probably Dalmatia. Possibly from 223 to 225 AD he was secretary a libellis under Emperor Alexander Severus, and about 228 he was praefectus vigilum. In Valentinian's Law of Citations he is classed with Papinian, Paulus, Gaius and Ulpian, as one of the five jurists whose recorded views were considered decisive. He is considered to be the last great jurist of the classic age o...
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Philip Sclater
1829 - 1913 (84 years)
Philip Lutley Sclater was an English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London for 42 years, from 1860 to 1902.
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Guillaume Budé
1467 - 1540 (73 years)
Guillaume Budé was a French scholar and humanist. He was involved in the founding of Collegium Trilingue, which later became the Collège de France. Budé was also the first keeper of the royal library at the Palace of Fontainebleau, which was later moved to Paris, where it became the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He was an ambassador to Rome and held several important judicial and civil administrative posts.
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Leone Levi
1821 - 1888 (67 years)
Leone Levi was an English jurist and statistician. Born to a Jewish family in Ancona, Italy, he worked in commerce there before emigrating to Liverpool in 1844. There he obtained British citizenship and joined the Presbyterian church.
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Ernst Zitelmann
1852 - 1923 (71 years)
Ernst Zitelmann [tsi:tlman] was a German jurist who specialized in the dogmatics of civil law. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Bonn. In 1873, he got his dissertation at the university of Leipzig with the topic "Begriff und Wesen der juristischen Person" .
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John Wilson
1785 - 1854 (69 years)
John Wilson of Elleray FRSE was a Scottish advocate, literary critic and author, the writer most frequently identified with the pseudonym Christopher North of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. He was professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1820 to 1851.
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Fritz Schulz
1879 - 1957 (78 years)
Fritz Schulz was a German jurist and legal historian. He was one of the 20th centuries' most important scholars in the field of Roman Law. The Nazis forced him to leave Germany and to emigrate to England due to his political stance and his Jewish origins.
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Elsa Eschelsson
1861 - 1911 (50 years)
Elsa Olava Kristina Eschelsson was the first woman to finish a Doctor of Laws degree and the first to attain the academic position of docent at a Swedish university, but was denied the right to even serve as acting professor because of her sex. She died in 1911 from an overdose of sleeping-powder.
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Emil Albert Friedberg
1837 - 1910 (73 years)
Emil Albert Friedberg was a German canonist. Friedberg was born at Konitz, Province of Prussia. His Jewish parents had joined the Evangelical Church in Prussia before his birth, letting him baptised Protestant. Friedberg was educated at Berlin and Heidelberg. After having been a member of the faculty at Berlin, Halle, and Freiberg, he was appointed professor at Leipzig in 1869.
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Louis-Alexandre Taschereau
1867 - 1952 (85 years)
Louis-Alexandre Taschereau was the 14th premier of Quebec from 1920 to 1936. He was a member of the Parti libéral du Québec. Early life Taschereau was born in Quebec City, Quebec, the son of Jean-Thomas Taschereau, lawyer and judge at the Supreme Court, and Marie-Louise-Joséphine Caron.
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Hermann Heller
1891 - 1933 (42 years)
Hermann Heller was a German legal scholar and philosopher of Jewish descent. He was active in the non-Marxist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic. He attempted to formulate the theoretical foundations of the social-democratic relations to the state, and nationalism. He was politically active in the relatively conservative Hofgeismarer Kreis of the SPD and is believed to have authored the group's statement of principles.
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Louis St. Laurent
1882 - 1973 (91 years)
Louis Stephen St. Laurent was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 12th prime minister of Canada from 1948 to 1957. Born and raised in southeastern Quebec, St. Laurent was a leading lawyer and a supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada. In December 1941, he entered politics as minister of justice under Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. In February 1942, he won a by-election in the riding of Quebec East. In September 1946, St. Laurent became secretary of state for external affairs and served in that post until two years later, when he became leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister, succeeding King who retired.
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Samuel Sewall
1652 - 1730 (78 years)
Samuel Sewall was a judge, businessman, and printer in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, best known for his involvement in the Salem witch trials, for which he later apologized, and his essay The Selling of Joseph , which criticized slavery. He served for many years as the chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, the province's high court.
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Robert McKimson
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
Robert Porter McKimson Sr. was an American animator and illustrator, best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. Cartoons and later DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. He wrote and directed many animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper, Speedy Gonzales, and the Tasmanian Devil, among other characters. He also developed Bugs Bunny's design in the 1943 short Tortoise Wins by a Hare.
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Scipione Gentili
1563 - 1616 (53 years)
Scipione Gentili was an Italian law professor and a legal writer. One of his six brothers was Alberico Gentili, one of the fathers of international law. Born at San Ginesio, Scipione Gentili left Italy at the age of 16 when he had to emigrate together with his father and his brother Alberico because of their Protestant beliefs. Together with his brother and his father, he settled in England, and, in the early 1580s, published several books with the London printer John Wolfe, all dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. Of them, the most important was a partial Latin translation of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
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Horace Harmon Lurton
1844 - 1914 (70 years)
Horace Harmon Lurton was a Confederate soldier and later, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Early life Lurton was born on February 26, 1844, in Newport, Kentucky. He attended the Old University of Chicago, then received a Bachelor of Laws in 1867 from Cumberland School of Law .
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Nicolae Titulescu
1882 - 1941 (59 years)
Nicolae Titulescu was a Romanian politician and diplomat, at various times ambassador, finance minister, and foreign minister, and for two terms president of the General Assembly of the League of Nations .
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John Hamilton
1899 - 1934 (35 years)
John "Red" Hamilton was a Canadian criminal and bank robber active in the 1920s–1930s, most notably as an associate of John Dillinger. He is best known for his lingering death and secret burial after being mortally wounded during a robbery.
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Stephen Hopkins
1707 - 1785 (78 years)
Stephen Hopkins was a Founding Father of the United States, a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and a signer of the Continental Association and Declaration of Independence. He was from a prominent Rhode Island family, the grandson of William Hopkins who was a prominent colonial politician. His great-grandfather Thomas Hopkins was an original settler of Providence Plantations, sailing from England in 1635 with his cousin Benedict Arnold who became the first governor of the Rhode Island colony under the Royal Ch...
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Falk Zipperer
1899 - 1966 (67 years)
Falk-Wolfgang Zipperer was a German jurist and librarian. Zipperer was one of Heinrich Himmler's closest friends. Life Falk Zipperer attended Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich. In April 1917, Zipperer left grammar school and began officer training. After his participation in the First World War, reaching the rank of lieutenant, Zipperer began studying jurisprudence at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, under, among others, Konrad Beyerle. In 1921, he became active in the Corps Vandalia Graz. He finished his studies in 1928.
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Nathan Abbott
1854 - 1941 (87 years)
Nathan D. Abbott was an American lawyer from the U.S. State of Maine. He was the co-founder of Stanford Law School, where he also served as its first dean. Personal life and education Abbott was born in Norridgewock, Maine, the son of Abiel Abbott and Sarah Smith Abbot on 11 July 1854. He studied in Norridgewock public schools until the age of 16. That year, in 1870, he moved to Andover, Massachusetts to study at Phillips Academy. After three years there, in 1873 he was admitted and studied at Yale College, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1877. At Yale, he was a member of Scroll...
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Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut
1772 - 1840 (68 years)
Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut , was a German jurist and musician. Early life He was born at Hamelin, in Hanover, the son of an officer in the Hanoverian Army, of French Huguenot descent. After school in Hameln and Hanover, Thibaut entered the University of Göttingen as a student of jurisprudence, went from there to Königsberg, where he studied under Immanuel Kant, and afterwards to the University of Kiel, where he was a fellow-student with Niebuhr. Here, after taking his degree of doctor of laws, he became a Privat-dozent. His younger brother was Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut, a mathematician.
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Karl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal
1769 - 1843 (74 years)
Karl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal, , a German jurist, was born at Meissen in Saxony, the son of a lawyer, and was the father of Karl Eduard Zachariae. Von Lingenthal received his early education at the famous public school of St. Afra in Meissen and later studied philosophy, history, mathematics and jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig. In 1792 he went to Wittenberg University as tutor to one of the counts of Lippe, and continued his legal studies.
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John Erskine of Carnock
1695 - 1768 (73 years)
John Erskine of Carnock was a Scottish jurist and professor of Scottish law at the University of Edinburgh. He wrote the Principles of the Law of Scotland and An Institute of the Law of Scotland, prominent books on Scots law.
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Jacob J. Rabinowitz
1899 - 1960 (61 years)
Jacob J. Rabinowitz was a professor of law, notable for his English translation of one of the Mishneh Torah books. Rabinowitz was born in Russia and at a young age immigrated with his family to the United States. His father, Rabbi Moshe Zvi Rabinowitz, was a rabbinical leader in Brooklyn, New York.
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Geoffrey Cheshire
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Geoffrey Chevalier Cheshire was a British barrister and legal scholar. He was the father of Leonard Cheshire, the British war hero and founder of the Cheshire Foundation Homes for the Sick. Biography Born in 1886 to Walter Christopher Cheshire, of Northwich, Cheshire, a solicitor and Major of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, and Clara , he was educated at Denstone College and Merton College, Oxford, obtaining a first class honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1908.
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Austin Abbott
1831 - 1896 (65 years)
Austin Abbott, LL.D. was a lawyer and academic. He is probably best remembered as being the government counsel in the trial of Charles J. Guiteau for the assassination of President James Garfield. Early life On December 18, 1831, Abbott was born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Jacob Abbott and Harriet Vaughan Abbott.
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Hendrik Jacob Hamaker
1844 - 1911 (67 years)
Hendrik Jacob Hamaker was a Dutch jurist and scholar. After studies at Leiden University, he practiced law there. Beginning in 1877, he taught civil law at the University of Utrecht, and after 1895 co-edited a leading journal of civil law, Weekblad voor Privaatrecht, Notarisambt en Registratie. He is noted for his work on judicial methodology, arguing for a substantial independence of judges from positive law.
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Charles Rann Kennedy
1808 - 1867 (59 years)
Charles Rann Kennedy was an English lawyer and classicist, best remembered for his involvement in the Swinfen will case and the issues of contingency fee agreements and legal ethics that it involved.
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August Friedrich Müller
1684 - 1761 (77 years)
August Friedrich Müller was a German legal scholar and logician. August Friedrich was born in Penig, the son of Johann Adam Müller and his wife Johanne Susanne, daughter of a pharmacist in Rochlitz, Johann Fromhold. Prefigured by his father, he attended school in 1697 and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1703. Here he completed a degree in early philosophical sciences; Andreas Rüdiger was his most important teacher. On the side he studied law under Gottlieb Gerhard Titius .
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Herbert Fuchs
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Herbert Fuchs was a former American Communist and federal government official who became a professor of law at the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1949, after which he became embroiled in anti-communist congressional hearings just after the peak of McCarthyism.
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C. J. Hamson
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Charles John Joseph "Jack" Hamson, QC was a British jurist. Early life and education Hamson was born in Constantinople, the son of Charles Edward Hamson, a vice-consul in the Levant Consular Service, and of Thérèse Boudon. He was educated at Downside School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a scholar, obtaining Firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos in 1925 and 1927 respectively. He then turned to the study of law, obtaining taking the LL.B. in 1934 and the LL.M. in 1935. Between 1928 and 1929 he was Davidson Scholar at Harvard and in 1932 he won the Yorke Prize. A fencer,...
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