Activism
- Jasper Alston Atkins (1922), civil rights activist, and the first black editor of the Yale Law Journal
- D'Army Bailey (1967), civil rights activist and founder of the National Civil Rights Museum
- Mark Barnes (1984), attorney and AIDS activist
- Craig Becker, labor attorney and a member of the National Labor Relations Board, 2010–2011
- Kathleen Neal Cleaver, prominent member of the Black Panther Party
- Bill Drayton (1970), founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a global social entrepreneurship organization
- Marian Wright Edelman (1963), president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund
- Robert Gnaizda, co-founder of the Greenlining Institute
- Seth Green, founder of Americans for Informed Democracy
- Michael Harrington, chairman of Democratic Socialists of America, 1982–1989
- Kenneth Hecht, public interest attorney and prominent advocate for improved access to affordable, nutritious food
- Louis Clayton Jones, civil rights activist and founder of the National Conference of Black Lawyers
- Van Jones (1993), prominent environmental activist, civil rights activist, and attorney; founder of Green For All
- Gay McDougall, civil rights activist and executive director of Global Rights, 1994–2006
- Creighton Miller, founder of the National Football League Players Association labor union
- Henry T. King (1943), prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, 1946–1947
- Lisa Richette, child welfare activist
- Catherine Roraback (1948), civil rights attorney best known for representing the plaintiffs in the landmark 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut
- Kenneth Roth (1980), executive director of Human Rights Watch, 1993–present
- Linda Rottenberg, founder of Endeavor
- Andrew Shapiro, founder of GreenOrder, an environmental sustainability consulting firm
- James Speth (1969), attorney and environmental activist
- Gregory Stanton, founder and president of Genocide Watch, 1999–present
- R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. (1946), founder of the America First Committee, the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II, while a student at Yale Law
- William Taylor (1954), civil rights activist
- Alfred Webre (1967), peace and environmental activist
Business==
- Lon Babby (1976), President of the Phoenix Suns
- Jeff Ballabon, senior vice president of CBS News; also an Orthodox Jewish lobbyist and the founder of Coordinating Council on Jerusalem
- Alfred Wellington Carter (1893), prominent landowner in Hawaii
- Dick Cass (1971), president of the Baltimore Ravens
- Sam Cohn (1956), co-founder of International Creative Management and talent agent to Paul Newman, Woody Allen, and Meryl Streep, among others
- E. Virgil Conway (1956), chairman and CEO of the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority
- Michael R. Eisenson (1981), co-founder, managing director, and CEO of Charlesbank Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm based in Boston and New York City
- Charles E. Fraser, prominent real estate developer
- Arthur Frommer (1953), publisher of Frommer's travel guidebook series
- Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters and Reuters
- Najeeb Halaby (1940), businessman and father of Queen Noor of Jordan
- Joel Hyatt, co-founder of Current TV with Al Gore
- William M. Jennings, executive in the National Hockey League and president of the New York Rangers
- John Koskinen, non-executive chairman of Freddie Mac, 2008–2011
- Michael E. Levine (1965), airline executive
- Larry Lucchino (1971), president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox
- Eli Jacobs (1964), financier and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, 1989–1993
- Victor S. Johnson, Jr., president of Aladdin Industries
- J. Howard Marshall (1931), oil magnate, known for his marriage to Anna Nicole Smith
- Mark McCormack, founder of IMG, an international sports and media company
- Robert Pozen (1972, J.S.D. 1973), vice chairman and president of Fidelity Investments
- Ken Stern, CEO of National Public Radio
- Raymond S. Troubh, independent financial consultant who served as a general partner at Lazard, 1961–1974; interim chairman of Enron, 2002–2004
- Fay Vincent (1963), 8th Commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989–1992
- Tim and Nina Zagat (1966), co-founders and publishers of Zagat
Read more about this topic: List Of Yale Law School Alumni