Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Photographer: Steve Petteway · Public domain

Spent the 1970s as a Harvard law professor writing the textbooks that shaped how American courts think about regulatory agencies, then put that expertise to direct use as assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate investigation. Bill Clinton put him on the Supreme Court in 1994, where for nearly three decades he argued for a pragmatic, consequences-focused reading of the law over rigid textualism, laying out that philosophy at length in his book Active Liberty. He retired in 2022 as one of the Court's most sustained liberal voices.