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).
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List of the most influential people in Law,
#1
Ronald Dworkin
#78
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Ronald Myles Dworkin was an American legal philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law. At the time of his death, he was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. Dworkin had taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford, where he was the Professor of Jurisprudence, successor to philosopher H.L.A. Hart.
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H. L. A. Hart
#181
Overall Influence
1907 - 1992 (85 years)
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was an English legal philosopher. He was the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. His most famous work is The Concept of Law, which has been hailed as "the most important work of legal philosophy written in the twentieth century". He is considered one of the world's foremost legal philosophers in the twentieth century.
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Antonin Scalia
#106
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 20...
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Joseph Raz
#249
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
#5
Clarence Thomas
#80
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Clarence Thomas is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.
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Richard Posner
#71
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
#7
Sandra Day O'Connor
#160
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired American lawyer, former politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. A moderate conservative, O'Connor was known for her precisely researched opinions. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, she was considered a swing vote for the Rehnquist Court and the first four months of the Roberts Court.
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John Paul Stevens
#283
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
John Paul Stevens was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1975 to 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-oldest justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court and the third-longest-serving justice. At the time of his death in 2019 at age 99, he was the longest-lived Supreme Court justice ever. His long tenure saw him write for the Court on most issues of American law, including civil liberties, the death penalty, government action, and intellectual property. Despite being a registered Republican who ...
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#209
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg authored the majority opinions in cases such as United States v. Virginia, Olmstead v. L.C., Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc., and City of Sherrill v.
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Anthony Kennedy
#349
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988. After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.
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Samuel Alito
#358
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated to the high court by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served on it since January 31, 2006. After Antonin Scalia, Alito is the second Italian American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court; he is also the eleventh Catholic Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.
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Robert Mueller
#44
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Robert Swan Mueller III is an American lawyer who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013. A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
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John Finnis
#512
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
#14
William Rehnquist
#413
Overall Influence
1924 - 2005 (81 years)
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years. Rehnquist was an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and the 16th chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. Considered a staunch conservative, Rehnquist favored a conception of federalism that emphasized the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states. Under this view of federalism, the Court, for the first time since the 1930s, struck down an act of Congress as exceeding its power under the Commerce Clause.
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Lawrence Lessig
#161
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 US presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
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John Roberts
#377
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. He has been described as having a moderate conservative judicial philosophy, though he is primarily an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and has been regarded as a swing vote on the Court.
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Stephen Breyer
#417
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.
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Cass Sunstein
#128
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#19
Sonia Sotomayor
#456
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since August 8, 2009. She is the third woman, first woman of color, the first Hispanic, and first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court.
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Alan Dershowitz
#132
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
#21
David Souter
#929
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
David Hackett Souter is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat that had been vacated by William J. Brennan Jr., Souter sat on both the Rehnquist and the Roberts courts.
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James Comey
#193
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
James Brien Comey Jr. is an American lawyer who was the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until his termination in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adult life; however, in 2016, he described himself as unaffiliated.
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Aharon Barak
#1251
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Aharon Barak is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995, and before this as Attorney General of Israel from 1975 to 1978.
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Lawrence M. Friedman
#1825
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Lawrence Meir Friedman is an American law professor, historian of American legal history, and author of nonfiction and fiction books. He has been a member of the faculty at Stanford Law School since 1968.
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Brett Kavanaugh
#448
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Brett Michael Kavanaugh is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since October 6, 2018. He was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
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Laurence Tribe
#1428
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School. A constitutional law scholar, Tribe is co-founder of the American Constitution Society. He is also the author of American Constitutional Law , a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times. Tribe was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010.
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Neil Gorsuch
#859
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.
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Erwin Chemerinsky
#1733
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#29
Glenn Greenwald
#111
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Glenn Edward Greenwald is an American journalist, author, and former lawyer. In 1996, Greenwald founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation. He began blogging on national security issues in October 2005, when he was becoming increasingly concerned with what he viewed as attacks on civil liberties by the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He became a vocal critic of the Iraq War and has maintained a critical position of American foreign policy.
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Ralph Nader
#221
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Ralph Nader is an American perennial presidential candidate, political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. He became famous in the 1960s and 1970s for his book Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the automotive industry for its safety record and helped lead to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966.
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Aaron Director
#688
Overall Influence
1901 - 2004 (103 years)
Aaron Director was a Russian-born American economist and academic who played a central role in the development of law and economics and the Chicago school of economics. Director was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and together with his brother-in-law, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Director influenced some of the next generation of jurists, including Robert Bork, Richard Posner, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
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Jeffrey Toobin
#1683
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, blogger, and former legal analyst for CNN. During the Iran–Contra affair, Toobin served as an associate counsel on its investigation at the Department of Justice. He moved from government and the practice of law into full-time writing during the 1990s, when he published his first books. He wrote for The New Yorker from 1993 to 2020. He was fired that fall for masturbating on-camera during a Zoom video conference call with co-workers—according to him, believing that his camera was off. He continued to serve as legal analyst for CNN for two yea...
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John Yoo
#1467
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
#34
Charles Fried
#3651
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Charles Anthony Fried is an American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a visiting professor at Columbia Law School. He also serves on the board of the nonpartisan group, the Campaign Legal Center.
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Theodor Meron
#3116
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Theodor Meron, is an American-Israeli lawyer and judge. He served as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals . He served as President of the ICTY four times and inaugural President of the Mechanism for three terms .
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Jeremy Waldron
#2648
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#37
Antonio Cassese
#3778
Overall Influence
1937 - 2011 (74 years)
Antonio Cassese was an Italian jurist who specialized in public international law. He was the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the first President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which he presided over until his resignation on health grounds on 1 October 2011.
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Randy Barnett
#2763
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
#39
Jack Goldsmith
#2996
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
#40
Vince Gilligan
#749
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
George Vincent Gilligan Jr. is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He is known for his television work, specifically as creator, head writer, executive producer, and director of AMC's Breaking Bad and its spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul . He was a writer and producer for The X-Files and was the co-creator of its spin-off, The Lone Gunmen .
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Günther Jakobs
#7954
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Günther Jakobs , is a German jurist, specializing in criminal law, criminal procedural law and philosophy of law. Jakobs studied legal sciences in Cologne, Kiel and Bonn, and in 1967 he graduated from the University of Bonn with a thesis on criminal law and competition doctrine.
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Louise Arbour
#1570
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Louise Arbour, is a Canadian lawyer, prosecutor and jurist. Arbour was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for Ontario and a former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. From 2009 until 2014, she served as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. She made history with the indictment of a sitting head of state, Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević, as well as the first prosecution of sexual assault as a crime against humanity. From March 2017 ...
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Norberto Bobbio
#1003
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Norberto Bobbio was an Italian philosopher of law and political sciences and a historian of political thought. He also wrote regularly for the Turin-based daily La Stampa. Bobbio was a social liberal in the tradition of Piero Gobetti, Carlo Rosselli, , and Aldo Capitini. He was also strongly influenced by Hans Kelsen and Vilfredo Pareto.
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Bryan A. Garner
#2084
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Bryan Andrew Garner is an American legal scholar and lexicographer. He has written more than two dozen books about English usage and style such as Garner's Modern English Usage for a general audience, and others for legal professionals. Garner also wrote two books with Justice Antonin Scalia: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts . He is the founder and president of LawProse Inc.
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Harvey McGregor
#7739
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Harvey McGregor CBE QC was a British barrister and was Warden of New College, Oxford, from 1985 to 1996. Early life The son of William Guthrie Robertson McGregor and Agnes McGregor , McGregor was educated at Inverurie Academy, Scarborough High School, and Queen's College, Oxford, where he held the Hastings Scholarship and graduated BA in 1951, BCL in 1952, MA in 1955, and DCL in 1983.
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Michael W. McConnell
#4378
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Michael William McConnell is an American jurist who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2002 to 2009. Since 2009, McConnell has been a professor and Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and Senior Of Counsel to the Litigation Practice Group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In May 2020, Facebook appointed him to its content oversight board. In 2020, McConnell published The President Who Would Not Be King: Executiv...
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Mark Tushnet
#4245
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Mark Victor Tushnet is an American legal scholar. He specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law, and is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Tushnet is identified with the critical legal studies movement.
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Glanville Williams
#6481
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
Glanville Llewelyn Williams was a Welsh legal scholar who was the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1978 and the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London, from 1945 to 1955. He has been described as Britain's foremost scholar of criminal law.
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Khaled Abou El Fadl
#2861
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Khaled Abou el Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprudence, National Security Law, Law and Terrorism, Islam and Human Rights, Political Asylum, and Political Crimes and Legal Systems. He is also the founder of the Usuli Institute, a non-profit public charity dedicated to research and education to promote humanistic interpretations of Islam, as well as the Chair of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has lectured on and ta...
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Michael Chertoff
#462
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Michael Chertoff is an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security to serve under President George W. Bush. Chertoff also served for one additional day under President Barack Obama. He was the co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. Chertoff previously served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He succeeded Tom Ridge as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005.
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