Distinguished University Professor Peter Reuter has been named one of the world’s best law scholars in the newly released 2025 edition of Research.com’s Best Scientists in Law. Reuter ranks 23rd globally and 20th in the United States, and has also been honored with their Law Leader Award.
“My work spans three different fields: drug policy (mostly a public health topic), money laundering controls (economists and lawyers) and criminal organizations (mostly criminologists),” said Reuter. “I am pleased that despite this fragmentation I am recognized as a ‘law scientist,’ a new label to me but a very attractive one.”
Research.com, a leading academic platform that aggregates and analyzes scholarly contributions across disciplines, released its fourth annual law ranking on April 29, highlighting global leaders in legal scholarship and seeking to foster stronger academic collaboration and knowledge-sharing across institutions and disciplines.
The ranking highlights legal scholars based on their impact in the field, measured by how often their work is published and cited by others. To make the list, researchers had to meet a high standard of influence within legal studies. Reuter’s inclusion reflects his decades of work across law, public policy and criminology on issues ranging from drug policy to organized crime.
This year’s ranking evaluated 2,158 researchers drawn from a group of more than 166,000 researchers worldwide.
Legal scholars like Reuter are playing a critical role in shaping policy and public discourse, using research to address complex societal challenges while protecting fundamental rights. Their insights are helping to shape laws, guide judicial outcomes and reform institutions on a global scale.
The Research.com rankings celebrate scholarly achievement while emphasizing the real-world impact of legal research, which support ongoing scholarship and collaboration across sectors.
