Top 8 Most Powerful Politicians Worldwide with a Law Background

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, born on October 26, 1947, is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, author, and speaker. She served in the cabinet of President Barack Obama as the 67th United States Secretary of State from January 21, 2009, to February 1, 2013. She was a U.S. Senator from New York from January 3, 2001, to January 21, 2009. She also served as the First Lady of the United States during Bill Clinton's presidency from 1993 to 2001 and as the First Lady of Arkansas during Bill Clinton's governorship from 1979 to 1981 and from 1983 to 1992. In 2016, she was the first major-party female candidate for President of the United States, representing the Democratic Party, but she lost to Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Born in Chicago and raised in the suburban town of Park Ridge, Illinois, Clinton attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1969, and earned a Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School in 1973. After working as a legal counsel to Congress, she moved to Arkansas, marrying Bill Clinton in 1975. In 1977, she co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was appointed as the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978, and the following year, she became a partner at the Rose Law Firm. As the First Lady of Arkansas, she led a special force with recommendations to reform the state's public schools and held several leadership positions. First Lady Hillary Clinton had graduated from Yale University. From an early age, she was an outstanding and intelligent student, achieving outstanding academic achievements. She was a formidable opponent and a trusted ally for President Obama, holding important positions in the United States such as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator... and being one of the most powerful women in the global political arena.

Tập Cận Bình sinh ngày 15 tháng 6 năm 1953 là một chính trị gia người Trung Quốc. Ông hiện đang là Tổng Bí thư Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc, Chủ tịch nước Cộng hòa nhân dân Trung Hoa và Chủ tịch Quân ủy Trung ương Trung Quốc. Tập là nhà lãnh đạo tối cao, quan chức cấp cao nhất ở Trung Quốc từ năm 2012 và ông chính thức nhận được danh hiệu "nhà lãnh đạo hạt nhân" từ Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc năm 2016. Tập cũng là một thành viên của Ban Thường vụ Bộ Chính trị Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc lần thứ 17, 18, 19 từ năm 2007. Là con trai của Đảng viên Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc kỳ cựu Tập Trọng Huân, ông tới trại lao động vùng nông thôn huyện Diên Xuyên ở tuổi thiếu niên sau khi cha của ông bị thanh lọc trong thời kỳ Đại Cách mạng văn hóa vô sản và đã sống trong một hang động ở vùng nông thôn của làng Lương Gia Hà, nơi ông làm việc cho một bí thư đảng ủy. Sau khi học xong chương trình tại Đại học Thanh Hoa với tư cách là "Công nông binh học viên", Tập đã thăng tiến cấp bậc chính trị ở những tỉnh ven biển Trung Quốc. Ông là người đứng đầu tỉnh Phúc Kiến từ 1999 đến 2002. Ông cũng đứng đầu, sau là Bí thư đảng ủy của tỉnh Chiết Giang bên cạnh từ 2002 tới 2007. Sau vụ cách chức bí thư đảng ủy Thượng Hải Trần Lương Vũ, Tập đã được chuyển tới để thay thế ông này trong một nhiệm kỳ ngắn năm 2007.

Ông gia nhập Ban thường vụ Bộ chính trị và Bí thư trung ương trong tháng 10 năm 2007, dành 5 năm tiếp theo như là nhân vật kế tục chắc chắn của chủ tịch Hồ Cẩm Đào. Tập Cận Bình là Phó Chủ tịch nước Cộng hòa Nhân dân Trung Hoa từ 2008 đến 2013 và Phó Chủ tịch Ủy ban Quân sự trung ương từ 2010 đến 2012. Tập Cận Bình là thế hệ tổng bí thư đầu tiên được sinh ra sau sự thành lập của Cộng hòa nhân dân Trung Hoa. Kể từ khi lên nắm quyền lực, Tập đã đưa ra những biện pháp mạnh để buộc đảng kỉ luật và để bảo đảm thống nhất nội bộ. Những chiến dịch chống tham nhũng của ông đã dẫn tới sự suy sụp của những người đương chức và đã nghỉ hưu của Đảng cộng sản, bao gồm những thành viên của Ủy ban thường trực Bộ chính trị. Ông là Tổng bí thư ban chấp hành Trung ương Đảng Cộng Sản của Trung Quốc khóa, Chủ tịch quân ủy trung ương, Chủ tịch nước Cộng hòa nhân dân Trung Hoa và là nhân vật số một trong Ban thường vụ Bộ chính trị Đảng Cộng Sản Trung Quốc - cơ quan quyền lực cao nhất của nước này. Ông chính là con trai của Cựu phó thủ tướng Trung Quốc là Tập Trọng Huân. Ông tốt nghiệp Đại học luật Thanh Hoa và lấy bằng tiến sĩ luật ở đây.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, born on March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020, was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. Following Sandra Day O'Connor, she was the second female justice to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. She was one of four female justices, alongside Sandra Day O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, who have served or are serving on the Supreme Court. During her tenure, Ginsburg became more outspoken about her views on women's rights and gender equality. She is often associated with the liberal wing of the court. Ginsburg proposed many notable opinions, as in the cases United States v. Virginia, Olmstead v. L.C, and Friends of the Earth Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.

Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family. Her sister passed away when she was young, and her mother also died shortly after her high school graduation. She earned a bachelor's degree at Cornell University and became a mother before starting law school at Harvard. She was one of the few women to study law at Harvard. Ginsburg studied at Columbia Law School and graduated at the top of her class. President Bill Clinton appointed her as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1993. She was the second woman in U.S. history to hold this position. Before that, she graduated from Harvard Law School and ranked among the top 9 outstanding female students at the school, making significant contributions to the women's rights movement.

Barack Hussein Obama, born on August 4, 1961, is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, he inherited a multicultural worldview from his youth. Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama has a history of community activism, working in Chicago before earning his law degree. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. In 2000, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives but was unsuccessful. In 2004, Obama gained national attention with his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in July, and later that year, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In the presidential campaign starting in 2007, by 2008, Obama narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination. He defeated Republican candidate John McCain in the general election and was inaugurated as the President of the United States on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Two years after graduating, Obama became the director of the Developing Communities Project, an organization affiliated with churches including 8 Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on the South Side of Chicago, where he worked as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. He helped establish a job training program, a college preparatory program, and a tenant's rights organization under the Algeld Gardens initiative. Obama also served as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Organization, a community organizing institute. By mid-1988, he visited Europe for the first time, staying for three weeks, then went to Kenya for five weeks to meet many relatives on his father's side, marking their first meeting. In 1992, Obama returned to Kenya with his fiancée, Michelle, and his sister, Auma, and visited Kenya again in August 2006 to see his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu, western Kenya. At the end of 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School and was selected as an editor for the Harvard Law Review in his first year and president of the journal in his second year. During the summers, he returned to Chicago, working at the law firms Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.

Marine Le Pen, born on August 5, 1968, is a French politician. She served as a lawyer from 1992 to 1998 and has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2004. Additionally, she assumed the presidency of the National Front from January 16, 2011. Le Pen joined the National Front in 1986 and was elected as a regional councilor (1998 - present), a member of the European Parliament, and a municipal councilor in Hénin-Beaumont (2008 - 2011). In 2011, she secured the leadership of the National Front with 67.65% (11,546 votes), defeating Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father, who had been the party's president since its founding in 1972. In 2012, she finished third in the presidential election with 17.90% of the votes, following François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. She initiated her second presidential run in April 2017. After finishing second in the first round, Le Pen faced Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party in the runoff on May 7, 2017.

Described as more democratic and republican than her father, Le Pen led a movement to 'detoxify' and improve the image of the National Front. This involved replacing positions, rebuilding the team, and expelling controversial members accused of racial discrimination, anti-Semitism, or supporting fascism. She expelled her father from the party on August 20, 2015, following his controversial statements. Le Pen also relaxed some of the party's political positions, advocating for the establishment of civil unions for same-sex couples, contrary to the party's previous opposition to recognizing legal same-sex relationships. She supports unconditional access to abortion and removing the death penalty from the party's legal platform. Le Pen was ranked among the most influential people in 2011 and 2015 in Time magazine's list of 100. In 2016, Politico rated her as the second most influential MEP in the European Parliament, just behind President Martin Schulz. Marine Le Pen is a French politician who was a lawyer from 1992 to 1998 and has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2004. She holds a Master of Laws from the University of Panthéon - Assas in France.

Samantha Power is an American diplomat of Irish descent and currently serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She held key positions such as senior adviser to Senator Obama in 2008 and special assistant to President Obama. She graduated from Harvard Law School. Born on September 21, 1970, Samantha Jane is an American academic, diplomat, and government official currently serving as the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously, she was the 28th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. Power is a member of the Democratic Party. She commenced her career as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars before venturing into academia. In 1998, she became the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she served as the first Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy until 2009. She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008, when she resigned from his presidential campaign after apologizing for referring to then-Senator Hillary Clinton as 'a monster' in an interview, thinking she had not succeeded.

Samantha Power joined the Obama State Department transition team in late November 2008. She was a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from January 2009 to February 2013. In April 2012, Obama selected her as the chair of a newly formed Atrocities Prevention Board. As the UN ambassador, Power's office focused on issues such as UN reform, women's and LGBT rights, religious freedom and minority rights, refugees, human rights, and democracy, including in the Middle East and North Africa, Sudan, and Myanmar. She was a key figure in the Obama administration's efforts to persuade the president to intervene militarily in Libya. In 2016, Forbes ranked her 41st on its list of the world's most powerful women. Power is a theme of the 2014 documentary film 'Watchers of the Sky,' explaining the contributions of several notable figures, including Power, to the anti-genocide movement. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for the book 'A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,' a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. She was also awarded the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2015 and the Henry A. Kissinger Prize in 2016.

Mitch McConnell is a United States Senator from the state of Kentucky. He graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law and held the position of President of the law student association of this state's bar association. Mitch McConnell started his political career through internships and later as assistants to various U.S. senators. Addison Mitchell McConnell III, born on February 20, 1942, is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he has been the U.S. Senator from Kentucky since 1985 and has been the Senate Minority Leader since 2021. Previously, he was the Majority Leader of the Senate from 2015 to 2021 and the Minority Leader from 2007 to 2015. He is married to former Secretary of Transportation and former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and is the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the Senate. In the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, he was the chairman of the Republican National Senate Committee. He was elected Majority Whip at the 108th Congress and re-elected to this position in 2004. In November 2006, he was elected Senate Minority Leader—a position he held until the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2015.

McConnell holds conservative political views, though he is known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican in his political career. He led the opposition to tighter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 that partially reversed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. McConnell worked to thwart Republican support for major initiatives of the President under the Obama administration, often using this strategy to block many of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. In the Trump administration, the Republican Party held the majority in the Senate under his leadership, confirming a record number of federal appellate judges in the first two years of the President and winning confirmation battles with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court. While supporting many of Trump's policies, McConnell criticized Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election and, although voting to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial on grounds related to the constitutionality of impeaching a former president, he is considered to have 'practical and moral responsibility' for the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952, and is a Russian politician and former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. He served as the second President of Russia from May 7, 2000, to May 7, 2008, and as the fourth President from May 7, 2012. Putin took office on December 31, 1999, following the resignation of President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. Yeltsin chose Putin as the prime minister to replace Sergei Stepashin in August 1999. Putin quickly gained recognition in Russia due to the conflict in Russia - Chechnya in September 1999 in response to the War in Dagestan and the Bombing of Russian apartments. After Putin's pro-Putin factions gained strong support in the 1999 parliamentary elections, Yeltsin resigned, and Putin became the acting president. In the March 2000 election, he led among ten candidates and became the second President of the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet era. Due to constitutional limits, Putin could not extend his leadership into a third term. After the success of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in the Russian presidential election in 2008, he was nominated by Medvedev for the position of Prime Minister of Russia and officially took office on May 8, 2008. In 2012, he continued to run for President and was elected for a third term with 63% of the vote. In 2018, Putin secured 77% of the presidential votes in the March 2018 election and continued as the President of Russia in his sixth term ending in 2024.

Putin is Russia's leader with the greatest public support since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Supporters praise him for restoring Russia's strength after the tumultuous years of Boris Yeltsin's rule. In his eight years in power, the economy emerged from crisis with GDP increasing sixfold (72% PPP). He also countered many anti-Russia propaganda and ousted the oligarchs who had manipulated Russian politics in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Putin's critics describe him as an autocrat abusing power. Some activists, human rights organizations, and Western commentators have expressed concern about the state of democracy, press freedom, and human rights in Russia, accusing Putin of violating human rights, suppressing civil opposition, and ordering the assassination of his political opponents. Putin has dismissed these allegations, stating that the West is showing 'double standards' by lecturing Russia about democracy, human rights while continually 'disregarding international law' and 'invading other countries with impunity.' U.S. government officials accused him of orchestrating an interference program against Hillary Clinton and supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which Putin consistently denies. In 2007, Time magazine chose him as Person of the Year. In 2015, Putin topped the list of the world's 100 most influential people, also by this magazine. Forbes magazine voted Putin the world's most powerful person for four consecutive years from 2013 to 2016, commenting that 'Putin continues to demonstrate that he is one of the very few men globally who has enough power to do as he pleases without hindrance, unencumbered by world opinion in pursuing his own objectives'.