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.

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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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List of the most influential people in Law,

#451

Roberta Romano

#26519

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Roberta Romano is Sterling Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. She is the first woman at Yale Law School to be named a Sterling Professor. Roberta Romano joined the Yale Law School faculty as a professor of law in 1985. She was named the Allen Duffy/Class of 1960 Professor of Law in 1991 and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law in 2005. She is Director of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law and Professor at the Yale School of Management.

#452

Viet D. Dinh

#11040

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Viet D. Dinh is a Vietnamese-born American legal scholar who is on the board of Strategic Education. He is also the Chief Legal and Policy Officer of Fox Corporation where he leads all legal, government and regulatory and government affairs. He served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Previously, Dinh was a partner at two leading law firms, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Bancroft PLLC, the latter of which he founded. Born in Saigon, in former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act and is a for...

#453

Jody Armour

#32895

Overall Influence

Jody David Armour is an American academic. He is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, where he specializes in race issues in legal decision-making. Life and career Armour came to study law after his father was set up and imprisoned when Armour was 8 years old.

#454

John Baker

#19494

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Sir John Hamilton Baker, KC , LLD, FBA, FRHistS is an English legal historian. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 2011. Biography Baker was born in Sheffield, the son of Kenneth Lee Vincent and Marjorie Baker . He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and University College London . He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1966 and was elected an Honorary Bencher in 1988.

#455

Gerald Uelmen

#17007

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Gerald F. Uelmen is an American attorney, writer, civil servant, and academic. He was part of O. J. Simpson's defense team during the O. J. Simpson murder case, dubbed the "Dream Team." Uelmen says he devised the memorable line used by Johnnie Cochran in the closing argument, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

#456

Gary Chartier

#3647

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Gary Charier currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University in Riverside, California; he is also the Associate Dean of the Zapara School of Business. Chartier received a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at La Sierra University in 1987 before earning his PhD with the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1991. Chartier has also taught at universities including Loma Linda University, California Baptist University, and Brunel University. Chartier is best known for his libertarian and anarchist philosophy. I...

#457

Michael J. Glennon

#24295

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Michael J. Glennon is professor of international law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of National Security and Double Government . Glennon studied political science at the College of St. Thomas . As an undergraduate, he worked for three summers as a staff assistant for congressman Donald M. Fraser . Glennon then attended the University of Minnesota Law School . After graduating law school, Glennon worked as assistant counsel for the Office of the Legislative Counsel at the United States Senate.

#458

Andreas Kinneging

Andreas Kinneging

#5751

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Andreas Antonius Maria Kinneging is Professor of Legal Philosophy at the University of Leiden, and a conservative philosopher in the Netherlands. Background Kinneging was raised in a Catholic family in the Dutch province of Zeeland. He studied political science at the Catholic University of Nijmegen , graduating with the highest honours.

#459

Benjamin Kaplan

#21052

Overall Influence

1911 - 2010 (99 years)

Benjamin Kaplan was an American copyright and procedure scholar and jurist. He was also notable as "one of the principal architects" of the Nuremberg trials. And as Reporter to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, he played a pivotal role in the 1966 revisions to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which transformed class action practice in the U.S.

#460

Zhang Qianfan

#28824

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Zhang Qianfan is a constitutional law professor at Peking University Law School, and an activist who advocates constitutionalism in China and has called for China's general political and judicial reform.

#461

Mirjan Damaška

#19009

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Mirjan Damaška is an American and Croatian jurist and legal scholar, known for his works in the sphere of comparative criminal justice and international criminal law. He was a professor at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where he was an acting dean in 1970. He is currently a Sterling Professor emeritus at the Yale Law School, where he has taught since 1976.

#462

Ben Shapiro

#2695

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is an American lawyer, columnist, author, and conservative political commentator. Shapiro writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has authored sixteen books.

#463

R. Kent Greenawalt

#19420

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

R. Kent Greenawalt was a legal scholar who was University Professor at Columbia Law School. His primary interests involved constitutional law, especially First Amendment jurisprudence, and legal philosophy.

#464

Mark O'Mara

#21798

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mark Matthew O'Mara is an American criminal defense lawyer in Orlando, Florida, known for being the attorney for George Zimmerman. He is a former prosecutor. O'Mara is a legal analyst for CNN. Early life and education Mark O'Mara is one of five siblings in a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent. He was raised in Rosedale, Queens, New York City. His father, John Joseph O'Mara, was a World War II veteran, shot down over Germany and spent the better part of a year in a POW camp, until liberated by the Soviets. His father came back to Brooklyn and married his fiancée, Anna "Nancy" McAteer. John Joseph O'Mara joined the New York Fire Department, where he rose to Battalion Chief.

#465

Samuel Estreicher

#30762

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Samuel Estreicher is Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, director of its Center for Labor and Employment and co-director of its Institute of Judicial Administration. He has published dozens of articles and several books on labor law, employment law, employment discrimination law, U.S. foreign relations law, international law, and Supreme Court decisionmaking.

#466

Anne Peters

#32085

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Anne Peters is a German-Swiss jurist with a focus on public international law. She is director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, honorary professor at the University of Basel, University of Heidelberg and Free University of Berlin, and at William W. Cook Global Law Professor at Michigan Law School.

#467

Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell

#6892

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Addison Mitchell McConnell III is an American politician and retired attorney who has been serving as Senate Minority Leader since 2021 and the senior United States senator from Kentucky since 1985. He previously served as minority leader from 2007 to 2015, majority leader from 2015 to 2021 and was majority whip from 2003 to 2007. McConnell has been the leader of the Senate Republican Conference since 2007 and is the longest serving Senate party leader in US history.

#468

Bill Handel

#7266

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

William Wolf Handel is a Brazilian-born American radio host and attorney. Handel currently hosts two radio programs on KFI in Los Angeles, California. First is KFI's local morning drive time show, in which he comments on current events. The program is one of the top rated morning programs in the Los Angeles radio market, with more than 1 million listeners. Additionally, he hosts a legal advice show on weekends called Handel on the Law, which launched in 1985 and is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, co-owned with KFI by iHeartMedia, Inc. Handel on The Law is heard on more than 150 stations in the U.S.

#469

Michael Klausner

#24369

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Michael Klausner is the Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He has been a member of the Stanford Law School faculty since 1997. He works in the areas of corporate law, corporate governance, and financial regulation.

#470

Constantijn Kortmann

#33312

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

Constantinus Albertus Josephus Maria "Constantijn" Kortmann was a Dutch professor of constitutional law. Kortmann was born in Groesbeek. In 1967, he obtained his doctoral’s degree in Dutch Law at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. In 1964, he studied the French language for half a year at the Institut Catholique in Paris, France. After his degree he pursued his study of the French language, as well as French public law, for another year at the University of Poitiers. In 1976, he obtained his doctor's degree at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. From 1976 to 1981, Kortmann was a professor...

#471

Francisco Tomás y Valiente

#11938

Overall Influence

1932 - 1996 (64 years)

Francisco Tomás y Valiente was a Spanish jurist, historian, and writer. He was professor of history of law in the Autonomous University of Madrid. He presided Spain's Constitutional Court from 1986 to 1992. He was assassinated by ETA in 1996.

#472

He Weifang

#15718

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

He Weifang is a former professor at Peking University of China and an activist striving to reform the Chinese judicial system, who has argued that the Chinese Communist Party is an unregistered and therefore an illegal organization in China.

#473

Małgorzata Gersdorf

Małgorzata Gersdorf

#23883

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Małgorzata Maria Gersdorf is a Polish lawyer and judge who served as the First President of the Supreme Court of Poland. She was appointed in 2014 and her six-year term ended on 30 April, 2020. Biography She graduated from the University of Warsaw with a law degree in 1975, and obtained a doctorate degree in 1981. She became a professor for the University of Warsaw in 1992, served as Vice-Rector of the University in 2005, and became head of the Law Department in 2008.

#474

Keith Ewing

#25442

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Keith David Ewing is professor of public law at King's College London and recognised as a leading scholar in public law, constitutional law, law of democracy, labour law and human rights. Ewing has been described as "one of the leading lights of English public law" and "one of the world's leading scholars of the constitution of social democracy". He is co-author of two standard textbooks in constitutional and administrative law, and labour law.

#475

Yehuda Zvi Blum

#26962

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Yehuda Zvi Blum is an Israeli professor of law and diplomat who served as Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations from 1978 to 1984. Biography Yehuda Z. Blum was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1931, and observed his bar-mitzvah in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He immigrated to British Mandate for Palestine in 1945. Blum earned his law degree from the University of London. His doctoral thesis, in 1961, was on Historic titles in international law.

#476

Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz

#20275

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz is an American constitutional law scholar, professor, and Broadway producer. He writes and teaches in the fields of constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and federal jurisdiction. He is the son of billionaire investor and philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz.

#477

John Laws

#14072

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

Sir John Grant McKenzie Laws was a Lord Justice of Appeal. He served from 1999 to 2016. He was the Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.

#478

Antony Anghie

#27845

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Antony T. Anghie is a law professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Secretary-General of the Asian Society of International Law. He was previously the Samuel D. Thurman Professor at S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah and continues to serve as Professor at the College of Law. He has been visiting professor at numerous schools including the American University Cairo, Cornell Law School, the London School of Economics, Harvard Law School and the University of Brasilia.

#479

Jean Stefancic

#18376

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Jean Stefancic is an American legal academic, Professor and Clement Research Affiliate at the University of Alabama. She has written numerous books with her husband Richard Delgado. Life Stefancic received a BA from Maryville College and an MA from the University of San Francisco. She taught at the University of Pittsburgh for five years, during which she was a research professor of law and a Derrick Bell scholar. She spent ten years at the University of Colorado law school. There she was on the advisory committee of the Center of the American West and affiliated with the Latino/a Research & Policy Center.

#480

Alger Hiss

#8101

Overall Influence

1904 - 1996 (92 years)

Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.

#481

Marc Jacobs

#214

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs, and formerly Marc by Marc Jacobs, a diffusion line, which was produced for approximately 15 years, before it was discontinued after the 2015 fall/winter collection. At its peak, it had over 200 retail stores in 80 countries. He was the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2014. Jacobs was on Time magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and was #14 on Out magazine's 2012 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".

#482

Anthony T. Kronman

#12402

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Anthony Townsend Kronman is an American legal scholar who serves as a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School specializing in contracts, bankruptcy, jurisprudence, social theory, and professional responsibility. He was the 14th dean of Yale Law School from 1994 to 2004.

#483

Sally Katzen

#25417

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Sally Katzen is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and government official. Katzen was a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Project's Agency Review Working Group responsible for the Executive Office of the President and government operations agencies, and held White House positions in the Clinton administration, including as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

#484

Michael Gerhardt

#27499

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Michael J. Gerhardt is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. He is also the director of the Center on Law and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an expert on constitutional law, separation of powers, and the legislative process. He is a Scholar in Residence at the National Constitution Center and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. On December 2, 2019, it was announced that Gerhardt would testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding th...

#485

Yash Ghai

#21253

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Yash Pal Ghai CBE is a Kenyan academic in constitutional law. As of 2007 he is the head of the Constitution Advisory Support Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal. Until 2008, he was a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Cambodia on human rights. In September 2008, he resigned his post, following bitter arguments with the Government of Cambodia. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2005.

#486

Lawrence Rosen

#17087

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Lawrence Rosen is an American attorney and computer specialist. He is a founding partner of Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a Californian technology law firm, specializing in intellectual property protection, licensing and business transactions for technology companies. He also served as general counsel and secretary of the Open Source Initiative, and participates in open source foundations and projects, such as the Python Software Foundation, and the Free Standards Group.

#487

Ülle Madise

#29452

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Ülle Madise is an Estonian lawyer who has served as Chancellor of Justice since 2015. Madise is the daughter of former member of the Supreme Court of Estonia Tõnu Anton. In December 2021 Madise was re-appointed by the Riigikogu for a second term as Chancellor of Justice.

#488

Anita Hill

#10382

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Anita Faye Hill is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.

#489

Gil Rémillard

#33407

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gil Rémillard is a Canadian academic, university professor and politician. Biography Born in Hull, Quebec , Rémillard is the son of Carmel Rémillard and Jeannine Desjardins. He studied at the University of Ottawa, where he obtained a licence in law in 1968, and at the Université de Nice, where he obtained a State doctorate in constitutional law in 1972.

#490

Iulia Motoc

#21055

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Iulia Antoanella Motoc is a Romanian judge and international law expert, currently a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights and a professor at the University of Bucharest. Before beginning her service at the Court, she served as a Judge at the Constitutional Court of Romania. Motoc was UN Special Rapporteur for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and she chaired a number of international experts bodies and was Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Committee. On 1 October 2013, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe elected Motoc a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights with respect to Romania.

#491

Ann Althouse

#19296

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Ann Althouse is an American law professor and blogger. Early life and education Althouse was raised in Newark and Wilmington, Delaware . She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan in 1973 and graduated first in her class from the New York University School of Law with a J.D. in 1981.

#492

Tommy Hilfiger

#307

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Thomas Jacob Hilfiger is an American fashion designer and the founder of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. After starting his career by co-founding a chain of jeans/fashion stores called People's Place in upstate New York in the 1970s, he began designing preppy clothing for his own eponymous menswear line in the 1980s. The company later expanded into women's clothing and various luxury items such as perfumes and went public in 1992.

#493

Jesse Dukeminier

#35668

Overall Influence

1925 - 2003 (78 years)

Jesse Dukeminier was a professor of law for 40 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, and authored or co-authored a significant number of articles and textbooks in the areas of property law, wills, trusts, and estates. Dukeminier's Trusts and Estates textbook has been described as "widely used and nationally recognized". Updates are still being produced to the text, with the Dukeminier name, alongside coauthors, remaining on the work.

#494

I. Glenn Cohen

#20812

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

I. Glenn Cohen is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is also the director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Cohen has written a number of articles, appearing in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine; JAMA; Cell; Nature; the Harvard, Stanford, Southern California, Minnesota, Iowa, and Hastings Law Reviews; the Harvard Journal of Law and Negotiation; the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology; the Food and Drug Law Journal; the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics; and the Hastings Center Reports. He has giv...

#495

Frank Iacobucci

#8319

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Frank Iacobucci is a former Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1991 until his retirement from the bench in 2004. He was the first Italian-Canadian, allophone judge on the court. Iacobucci was also the first judge on the Supreme Court to have been born, raised and educated in British Columbia. Iacobucci has had a distinguished career in private practice, academia, the civil service and the judiciary.

#496

Anine Kierulf

#30462

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Anine Kierulf is Associate Professor of constitutional law at the University of Oslo Department of Public and International Law, and a special advisor to the Norwegian National human rights institution, where she was Research Director from 2017-2020. Her main areas of research are constitutional law, human rights and freedom of expression.

#497

Anthony G. Amsterdam

#21876

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Anthony Guy Amsterdam is an American lawyer and University Professor Emeritus at New York University School of Law. In 1981, Alan Dershowitz called Amsterdam “the most distinguished law professor in the United States.”

#498

Michael I. Sovern

#24531

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Michael Ira Sovern was the 17th president of Columbia University. Prior to his death, he served as the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He was a noted legal scholar of Labor Law and an expert in employment discrimination.

#499

Eyal Benvenisti

#31323

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Eyal Benvenisti is an attorney and legal academic, and Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge. He was formerly Anny and Paul Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights at Tel Aviv University's faculty of law. Since 2003 he has been part of the Global Law Faculty at New York University School of Law. He is the founding co-editor of Theoretical Inquiries in Law , where he served as Editor in Chief . He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of International Law, and International Law in Domestic Courts.

#500

Ariel Porat

#9461

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ariel Porat is the president of Tel Aviv University , a full professor and former dean at TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law. Until his appointment as president, he was a distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, incumbent of the Alain Poher Chair in Private Law at TAU, and recipient of The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture for Legal Research.

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