Subfield · Law
Most cited papers in Law
What are the most cited papers in Law?
The most cited paper in Law is "The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications" (Thomas J. Donaldson, Lee E. Preston, 1995), with 9,229 citations. Next come "Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities" (4,075) and "The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" (3,629).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 659 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications Thomas J. Donaldson, Lee E. Preston · Academy of Management Review | 1995 | 9,229 |
| 2 | Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities Albert Bandura · Personality and Social Psychology Review | Aug 1999 | 4,075 |
| 3 | The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Philippe Sands · Review of European Community & International Environmental Law | Sep 1992 | 3,629 |
| 4 | THE INVERSE CARE LAW Julian Tudor Hart · The Lancet | Feb 1971 | 3,303 |
| 5 | Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda Gretchen Helmke, Steven Levitsky · Perspectives on Politics | Dec 2004 | 3,164 |
| 6 | On Face-Work Erving Goffman · Psychiatry | Aug 1955 | 2,865 |
| 7 | Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds Wendy Nelson Espeland, Michael Sauder · American Journal of Sociology | Jul 2007 | 2,423 |
| 8 | Getting to YES. Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Alan T. Marty · Critical Care Medicine | Oct 1983 | 2,416 |
| 9 | Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control Mathew D. McCubbins, ROGER G. NOLL, Barry R. Weingast · The Journal of Law Economics and Organization | 1987 | 2,277 |
| 10 | Signature pedagogies in the professions Lee S. Shulman · Daedalus | Jun 2005 | 2,028 |
| 11 | Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral Guido Calabresi, A. Douglas Melamed · Harvard Law Review | Apr 1972 | 1,954 |
| 12 | A Theory of the Calculus of Voting William H. Riker, Peter C. Ordeshook · American Political Science Review | Mar 1968 | 1,939 |
| 13 | The protection of information in computer systems Jerome H. Saltzer, Michael D. Schroeder · Proceedings of the IEEE | 1975 | 1,899 |
| 14 | THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS IN THE REVIVAL OF TRADE: THE LAW MERCHANT, PRIVATE JUDGES, AND THE CHAMPAGNE FAIRS Paul Milgrom, Douglass C. North, Barry R. Weingast · Economics and Politics | Mar 1990 | 1,822 |
| 15 | The New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering Robert B. Denhardt, Janet Vinzant Denhardt · Public Administration Review | Nov 2000 | 1,782 |
| 16 | Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis Joseph S. Nye · American Political Science Review | Jun 1967 | 1,726 |
| 17 | Hateful Symbols or Hateful People? Predictive Features for Hate Speech Detection on Twitter Zeerak Waseem, Dirk Hovy | 2016 | 1,678 |
| 18 | Blockchain technology: principles and applications Marc Pilkington · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks | 30 Sep 2016 | 1,584 |
| 19 | Risk and Responsibility Anthony Giddens · Modern Law Review | 1999 | 1,565 |
| 20 | European Integration from the 1980s: State‐Centric v. Multi‐level Governance* Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, Kermit Blank · JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies | Sep 1996 | 1,540 |
| 21 | Reconceiving Environmental Justice: Global Movements And Political Theories David Schlosberg · Environmental Politics | 30 Jul 2004 | 1,446 |
| 22 | The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe Andrew M. Moravcsik · International Organization | 2000 | 1,445 |
| 23 | The Law of Group Polarization Cass Robert Sunstein · Journal of Political Philosophy | Jun 2002 | 1,377 |
| 24 | Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron Cass Robert Sunstein, Richard H. Thaler · The University of Chicago Law Review | 2003 | 1,332 |
| 25 | Effect of Convalescent Plasma Therapy on Time to Clinical Improvement in Patients With Severe and Life-threatening COVID-19 Ling Li et al. · JAMA | 3 Jun 2020 | 1,316 |
| 26 | The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Toshio Yamagishi · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 1986 | 1,284 |
| 27 | Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains Mehmet Yaşar İşcan, Barbara Q. McCabe · Forensic Science International | Feb 2001 | 1,273 |
| 28 | Cidadania no Brasil: o longo caminho Regina Célia Diniz Werner · Revista de Administração Contemporânea | Mar 2005 | 1,273 |
| 29 | Why a Right to Explanation of Automated Decision-Making Does Not Exist in the General Data Protection Regulation Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt, Luciano Floridi · International Data Privacy Law | 11 Apr 2017 | 1,266 |
| 30 | The assessment of professional competence: Developments, research and practical implications Cees van der Vleuten · Advances in Health Sciences Education | 1996 | 1,262 |
| 31 | Separation of Powers and Political Accountability Tomas Persson, Gérard Roland, Guido Tabellini · The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Nov 1997 | 1,218 |
| 32 | The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments Maya Bar‐Hillel · Acta Psychologica | May 1980 | 1,204 |
| 33 | Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999 Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn · Political Analysis | 2002 | 1,187 |
| 34 | Social Norms and Social Roles Cass Robert Sunstein · Columbia Law Review | May 1996 | 1,183 |
| 35 | The Idea Of An Overlapping Consensus John Rawls · Oxford Journal of Legal Studies | 1987 | 1,075 |
| 36 | Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story Terry M. Moe · The Journal of Law Economics and Organization | 1990 | 1,069 |
| 37 | Does Teacher Certification Matter? High School Teacher Certification Status and Student Achievement Dan D. Goldhaber, Dominic J. Brewer · Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis | Jun 2000 | 1,041 |
| 38 | Bias in peer review Carole J. Lee, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Guo Zhang et al. · Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology | 10 Dec 2012 | 1,010 |
| 39 | ‘Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies' Antonino Palumbo, Richard Bellamy | 2 Mar 2017 | 1,009 |
| 40 | A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law Margaret M. Blair, Lynn A. Stout · Virginia Law Review | Mar 1999 | 990 |
| 41 | Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights Christopher McCrudden · European Journal of International Law | Sep 2008 | 979 |
| 42 | The Two Faces of Issue Voting Edward G. Carmines, James A. Stimson · American Political Science Review | Mar 1980 | 974 |
| 43 | Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics Luc Boltanski, Graham Burchell | 1999 | 932 |
| 44 | The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy Martha C. Nussbaum · eYLS (Yale Law School) | 1987 | 931 |
| 45 | The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self Michael J. Sandel · Political Theory | Feb 1984 | 923 |
| 46 | Legitimation durch Verfahren? Erhard Blankenburg · Springer-Lehrbuch | 1995 | 922 |
| 47 | Image forgery detection Hany Farid · IEEE Signal Processing Magazine | Mar 2009 | 922 |
| 48 | The Psychology of Criminal Conduct David S. Nussbaum · Canadian Journal of Criminology | Oct 1999 | 909 |
| 49 | Linguistic form and relevance Deirdre Wilson, Dan Sperber · Lingua | Jun 1993 | 907 |
| 50 | What Do Judges and Justices Maximize? (The Same Thing Everybody Else Does) Richard A. Posner · Supreme Court Economic Review | 1993 | 898 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.