Antonin Scalia
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 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 Supreme Court's history. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 by President Do...
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Ronald Dworkin
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Ronald Myles Dworkin was an American 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 renowned philosopher H. L. A. Hart. An influential contributor to both philosophy of law and political philosophy, Dworkin received the 2007 Holberg International Memorial Prize in the ...
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Clarence Thomas
1948 - Present (74 years)
Clarence Thomas is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall, and has served since 1991. Thomas is the second African-American to serve on the Court, after Marshall. Since 2018, Thomas has been the senior associate justice, the longest-serving member of the Court, with a tenure of as of .
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Richard Posner
1939 - Present (83 years)
Areas of Specialization: Law and Economics Richard Posner is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School who served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He earned his A.B. degree in English literature from Yale University (summa cum laude), and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude and valedictorian). Posner’s background in economics informs his legal philosophy. His legal career has included a clerkship for Justice William J. Brennan, of the United States Supreme Court, a position under Thurgood Marshall, who was at the time, Solicitor General of the United States Department of Justice.
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Lawrence Lessig
1961 - Present (61 years)
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American academic, attorney, 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 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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 generally viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. She eventually became part of the liberal wing of the Court as the Court shifted to the right over time. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg wrote notable majority opinions, including United States v.
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John Paul Stevens
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
John Paul Stevens was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1975 to 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-oldest justice in the history of the Court and the third-longest-serving justice. At the time of his death, 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. In cases involving presidents of the United States, he wrote for the court that they were to be held accountable under American law.
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Anthony Kennedy
1936 - Present (86 years)
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an American retired 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 the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.
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Sandra Day O'Connor
1930 - Present (92 years)
Sandra Day O'Connor is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was the first woman nominated and, subsequently, the first woman confirmed. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, she was considered the swing vote for the Rehnquist Court and the first few months of the Roberts Court.
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Samuel Alito
1950 - Present (72 years)
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. 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 W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served since January 31, 2006. He is the second Italian-American justice to serve on the Supreme Court, after Antonin Scalia, and the eleventh Roman Catholic.
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Stephen Breyer
1938 - Present (84 years)
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1994. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Breyer is generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court.
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Robert Mueller
1944 - Present (78 years)
Robert Swan Mueller III is an American lawyer and government official 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 Ba...
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John Finnis
1940 - Present (82 years)
Areas of Specialization: Jurisprudence, Philosophy of Law John Finnis is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law and a Permanent Senior Distinguished Research Fellow for University of Notre Dame. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Law & Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford. he earned his LL.B from the University of Adelaide’s St. Mark’s College. He then attended University College in Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, earning a PhD. Well-known as a legal philosopher and scholar, Finnis has published a number of books and articles about the philosophical underpinnings of the law, including Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth.
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John Roberts
1955 - Present (67 years)
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases, including Shelby County v. Holder, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, King v. Burwell, Department of Commerce v. New York, and Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy but has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and since the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018 has come to be regarded as a swing vote on the Court.
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Ralph Nader
1934 - Present (88 years)
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the United States, Nader attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He first came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of the bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a highly influential critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers. Following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader led a group of volunteer law students—dubbed "Nader's Raiders"—...
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Cass Sunstein
1954 - Present (68 years)
Areas of Specialization: Administrative Law, Environmental Law and Law and Behavioral Economics Cass Sunstein is Harvard Law School’s Robert Walmsley University Professor. He earned his B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University and is a scholar of constitutional law and behavioral economics. Sunstein has served multiple faculty roles, with professorships at the University of Chicago and Columbia Law School. He was nominated by President Barack Obama, and subsequently confirmed by the Senate, as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for the United States Office of Management and Budget.
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Alan Dershowitz
1938 - Present (84 years)
Areas of Specialization: Civil Liberities, Criminal Law Alan Dershowitz is a former Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He earned his A.B. in political science from Brooklyn College and his LL.B from Yale Law School. Known as a devil’s advocate, he considers himself to be a civil libertarian. He has provided defense representation to numerous high-profile clients, including Harry Reems for Deep Throat, O.J. Simpson for murder, Jeffrey Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors, and Harvey Weinstein for sexual abuse. He has remained a champion for the rights of the accused, particularly in cases of rape.
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Aharon Barak
1936 - Present (86 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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William Rehnquist
1924 - 2005 (81 years)
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986, then as the 16th chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. Considered a 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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Jeremy Waldron
1953 - Present (69 years)
Areas of Specialization: Legal Philosophy Jeremy Waldron is a University Professor of the School of Law at New York University and an adjunct professor for Victoria University of Wellington. He earned a B.A. and an LL.B. from the University of Otago in New Zealand. He went on to earn a D.Phil. at Lincoln College, Oxford. Waldron’s extensive catalog of writings explore the rule of law, constitutionalism, homelessness, torture, and many other topics. His most recent book, One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality, was published in 2017. He has critically examined the notion of human dignity, and the impacts of a leveling of social classes by way of elevation of all to royalty.
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Bryan A. Garner
1958 - Present (64 years)
Bryan Andrew Garner is an American lawyer, lexicographer, and teacher who 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. He also wrote two books with Justice Antonin Scalia: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts .
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Thomas Buergenthal
1934 - Present (88 years)
Thomas Buergenthal is a renowned international lawyer, scholar, law school dean, and former judge of the International Court of Justice . He resigned his ICJ post as of 6 September 2010 and returned to his position at The George Washington University Law School where he is currently the Lobingier Professor Emeritus of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence.
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Sonia Sotomayor
1954 - Present (68 years)
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is 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 to hold the position. Sotomayor is the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court.
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David Souter
1939 - Present (83 years)
David Hackett Souter is a retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He served from October 1990 to his retirement in June 2009. Appointed by US 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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Neil Gorsuch
1967 - Present (55 years)
Neil McGill Gorsuch 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 Donald Trump on January 31, 2017, and has served since April 10, 2017.
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Menachem Mazuz
1955 - Present (67 years)
Menachem "Meni" Mazuz is an Israeli jurist and Supreme Court justice, who served as the Israeli Attorney General in the years 2004–2010. Life and career Mazuz was born in Djerba, Tunisia, the fifth in a family of nine children of the rabbi of one of the island's Jewish communities. His family immigrated to Israel a year after his birth, settling in Netivot.
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Guido Calabresi
1932 - Present (90 years)
Areas of Specialization: Law and Economics Guido Calabresi is a Senior United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale University. He is known, along with his colleagues Ronald Coase and Richard Posner , as a founder of the interdisciplinary study of law and economics. He earned a B.S. from Yale University, a B.A. from Magdalen College of Oxford University, an LL.B from Yale Law School and an M.A. from University of Oxford. Calabresi’s career has been remarkable. He was the youngest full professor at Yale Law School and he has pioneered methods of applying economic reasoning to the study of law.
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Jack Goldsmith
1962 - Present (60 years)
Jack Goldsmith is a professor of law at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has earned a B.A. from Washington & Lee University, a B.A. and M.A. from University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Goldsmith is a prolific writer with many published works regarding international law, federal courts, and national security, including The Limits of International Law, and The Terror Presidency. He has also recently written a personal memoir about his childhood titled, In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, A Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search...
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Jared Kushner
1981 - Present (41 years)
Jared Corey Kushner is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to his father-in-law, Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. Kushner is the son of the former real-estate developer Charles Kushner and is married to businesswoman Ivanka Trump, former President Trump's daughter and fellow advisor. As a result of his father's conviction and incarceration for fraud, he took over management of his father's real estate company Kushner Companies, which launched his business career. He later also bought Observer Media, publisher of the New York Observer. He i...
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James Comey
1960 - Present (62 years)
James Brien Comey Jr. is an American lawyer who was the 7th director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until his dismissal 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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Robert P. George
1955 - Present (67 years)
Areas of Specialization: Philosophy of Law, Constitutional Interpretation, Civil Liberties, Law and Religion Notable conservative American legal scholar Robert P. George currently holds the titles there of McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has a varied educational background. He completed his undergraduate education at Swarthmore College, earned his JD at Harvard Law School, and earned a master of theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School. He also earned several advanced degrees at the University of Oxford.
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Brett Kavanaugh
1965 - Present (57 years)
Brett Michael Kavanaugh is 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 and worked as a staff lawyer for various offices of the federal government. Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, he has come to be regarded as a key swing vote on the Court.
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Glenn Greenwald
1967 - Present (55 years)
Glenn Edward Greenwald is an American journalist, author, and lawyer. In 1996, he founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation. He began blogging on national security issues in October 2005, while he was becoming increasingly concerned with what he viewed to be 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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Randy Barnett
1952 - Present (70 years)
Areas of Specialization: Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, Contract Theory Randy Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University. He earned his B.A. from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a noted scholar in constitutional law and jurisprudence. A self-professed libertarian, Barnett is a proponent of liberal interpretations of justice. Specifically, he holds the opinion that the federal courts must vigorously defend the personal liberties of private citizens, as a check on overreach by the executive and legislative branches.
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H. L. A. Hart
1907 - 1992 (85 years)
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart , usually cited as H. L. A. Hart, was an English legal philosopher, and a major figure in political and legal philosophy. He was 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, alongside Hans Kelsen.
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Carla Del Ponte
1947 - Present (75 years)
Carla Del Ponte is a former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals. A former Swiss attorney general, she was appointed prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in August 1999, replacing Louise Arbour.
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Antonio Cassese
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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John Yoo
1967 - Present (55 years)
Areas of Specialization: Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law John Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. and from Yale University with a J.D. He is well known for his scholarship regarding executive power, domestic surveillance, and searches. Most notably, his name is associated with his Torture Memos, which mounted a defense of the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding as a means of interrogation. His position on the matter was broadly criticized, with Secretary of State Colin Powell characterizing his position as a violation of the tenets of the Geneva Conventions.
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Vladimir Putin
1952 - Present (70 years)
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia, a position he has filled since 2012, and previously from 1999 until 2008. He was also the prime minister from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. Putin is the second-longest current serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko of neighbouring Belarus.
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Soli Sorabjee
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Soli Jehangir Sorabjee, AM was an Indian jurist who served as Attorney-General for India from 1989 to 1990, and again from 1998 to 2004. In 2002, he received the Padma Vibhushan for his defence of the freedom of expression and the protection of human rights.
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Beverley McLachlin
1943 - Present (79 years)
Beverley Marian McLachlin is a Canadian jurist and author who served as the 17th Chief Justice of Canada from 2000 to 2017. She is the longest-serving chief justice in Canadian history and the first woman to hold the position. She is considered by many to be among the finest legal minds in the history of the Supreme Court.
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Laurence Tribe
1941 - Present (81 years)
Areas of Specialization: U.S. Constitutional Law Laurence Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor for Harvard University’s Law School and a co-founder of the American Constitution Society. He earned his A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University. Tribe is a well-known scholar of constitutional law. Among his notable clients have been Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church, the National Gay Task Force in their case against the Board of Education, and was a member of Al Gore’s legal team in the wake of Florida’s “hanging chad” debacle during the 2000 United States presidential election.
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Juliane Kokott
1957 - Present (65 years)
Juliane Kokott is the German Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor at the University of St. Gallen. Education Kokott studied law in Bonn and Geneva. Subsequent to her studies, she earned the academic title of Master of Laws at the American University Washington, D.C., while being on a scholarship of the Fulbright Program. There she also worked as an Assistant to Thomas Buergenthal, Judge at the International Court of Justice and former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She worked as a judicial intern at the Landgericht Heidelberg ...
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Nadine Strossen
1950 - Present (72 years)
Areas of Specialization: Constitutional Law, Civil Liberties Formerly the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Nadine Strossen has built a career as a champion of civil liberties and advocacy. Currently she is a professor at New York Law School and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Strossen completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard in 1972, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975, graduating magna cum laude. Following her studies, Strossen practiced law in Minneapolis and New York before joining the law faculty of New York Law School in 1988. She assumed her r...
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Richard Goldstone
1938 - Present (84 years)
Richard Joseph Goldstone is a South African former judge. After working for 17 years as a commercial lawyer, he was appointed by the South African government to serve on the Transvaal Supreme Court from 1980 to 1989 and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa from 1990 to 1994.
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Johnnie Cochran
1937 - 2005 (68 years)
Johnnie Lee Cochran Jr. was an American lawyer and civil activist best known for his leadership role in the defense and criminal acquittal of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. He often defended his client with rhymes like "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit!"
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Jack Balkin
1956 - Present (66 years)
Jack M. Balkin is an American legal scholar. He is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project , a research center whose mission is "to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society." He also directs the Knight Law and Media Program and the Abrams Institute for Free Expression at Yale Law School.
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Peter Hogg
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Peter Wardell Hogg was a New Zealand-born Canadian legal scholar and lawyer. He was best known as a leading authority on Canadian constitutional law, with the most academic citations in Supreme Court jurisprudence of any living scholar during his lifetime, according to Emmett Macfarlane of the University of Waterloo.
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David Boies
1941 - Present (81 years)
David Boies is an American lawyer and chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner. Boies rose to national prominence for three major cases: leading the U.S. federal government's successful prosecution of Microsoft in United States v. Microsoft Corp., his unsuccessful representation of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, and for successful representation of the plaintiff in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which invalidated California Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. Boies has also represented various clients in suits involving in the United States, including Thera...
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Alex Kozinski
1950 - Present (72 years)
Alex Kozinski is a Romanian-born American jurist and lawyer who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017. He was a prominent and influential judge, and many of his law clerks went on to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court justices.
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