What is Your Sunstein Number? Edelman & George on Coauthorship Networks

Paul Edelman & Tracey George (Vanderbilt) has posted Six Degrees of Cass Sunstein: Collaboration Networks in Legal Scholarship on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Degrees of separation is a concept that is intuitive and appealing in popular culture as well as academic discourse: It tells us something about the connectedness of a particular field. It also reveals paths of influence and access. Paul Erdős was the Kevin Bacon of his field - math - coauthoring with a large number of scholars from many institutions and across subfields. Moreover, his work was highly cited and important. Mathematicians talk about their Erdős number (i.e., numbers of degrees of separation) as a sign of their connection to the hub of mathematics: An Erdős number of 2 means a scholar did not co-author with Erdős but did collaborate with someone who did (i.e., an Erdős 1). In this study, we examine collaboration networks in law, searching for the Legal Erdős. We crown Sunstein as the Legal Erdős and name a complete (as possible) list of Sunstein 1s and 2s.

Actually, Cass would be the Rod Steiger of legal scholarship.  Edelman & George are anxious for any corrections for their data.  If you are Cass Sunstein, have co-authored with Cass Sunstein, or co-authored with one of Sunstein's co-authors, you might want to check their data for accuracy.

I haven't co-authored with anyone who has a Sunstein number of one.  So at best, my Sunstein number is three.