Best Law Scientists

The scope of our Law research
Research.com’s best researchers ranking is a trustworthy account of leading scientists from the discipline of Law, established by means of a thorough examination of 166,880 researchers identified from various bibliometric data sources. For the area of Law, as many as 1698 scholars were examined.

What is D-index approval threshold for Law
The D-index threshold for including a scientist to be considered is established at 20 if the majority of of their publications are in the area of Law. The acceptance factors for scholars to be considered into the ranking of top researchers are based on the D-index, proportion of the publications made within the given discipline in addition to the awards and achievements of the researchers. The D-index threshold for listing leading scientists is set as an increment of 10 depending on the total number of scientists assessed for each discipline whilst ensuring that the top 1% of best scientists are incorporated into the ranking. There should be a proximity of 30% or less between a scholar’s general H-index and their D-index.

Additional verification rules
Because our primary mission is to make sure that only actual scientists are included in the ranking we are aware that metrics are never meant to be a complete tool to assess the work of researchers. Because of that we manually inspect every profile and cross-correlate it against publications in a wide range of credible sources. Even though it’s not a metric defining a scientist’s position in our ranking, the number of documents published in major journals and conference proceedings should constitute a valuable secondary signal of their contribution to research in a selected discipline. Position in the ranking is determined by every researcher’s D-index with the help of metrics collected from OpenAlex and CrossRef, which are the most credible and well-known bibliometric databases of this type accessible to the research community. A thorough overview of our research process can be found on our methodology page.

Our agenda
Our objective is to motivate researchers, entrepreneurs and politicians worldwide to explore where leading experts are heading and to give an opportunity for the whole scientific community to get to know who the leading experts in specific disciplines, in various countries, or even within research institutions are.
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Key findings for Law
As far as scientific affiliations are concerned, the affiliation with the highest number of leading scholars in the world is Harvard University with 18 scientists affiliated with it being present in the Law ranking. It is followed by New York University with 16 scholars. Ranking thirds is Yale University with 16 scientists.

Prominent scientists featured in the world are affiliated with American Bar Foundation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Australian National University, Stanford University, University of Louisville, London School of Economics and Political Science, Arizona State University, Columbia University, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Pacific Institute For Research and Evaluation.

Professor Cass R. Sunstein from Harvard University is listed as the best scholar in the world in our ranking with a D-index of 114. Ranking on spot no. 2 in the world is Richard A. Posner from University of Chicago with a D-index of 98. The third position in the world is occupied by Alejandro Portes from University of Miami with a D-index of 96.

The average D-index for the top 3% scholars is 81 against an average of 30 for all scholars included in our ranking.

The average number of published articles in the discipline of Law for the top 1% of researchers in the ranking is 571 against an average of 150 for all scholars.

The average number of citations for the top 10% scientists is 24748 against an average of 8304 for all scholars.