How Are Natalie Portman And Judge Alex Kozinski Alike?

You'll never guess the answer to this question.

They are both fabulous celebrities who play judges in the movies — Portman playing the Notorious RBG in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic, and Judge Kozinski playing a judge in Atlas Shrugged: Part II.

That’s what I would have guessed. But one former Kozinski clerk, Judge Mark V. Holmes of the United States Tax Court, had a different — and very interesting — answer.

I have reprinted below, with the permission of Judge Holmes, an email the judge sent to me and to Professor Eugene Volokh of Volokh Conspiracy fame (and also, like Judge Holmes, a former clerk to Judge Kozinski).


Dear David and Eugene:

How are Natalie Portman and Judge Alex Kozinski alike?

The obvious answer is that they are both superhotties. But I would like to pitch it to you as blogworthy another answer that I have recently proved is true.

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Both the lovely Mrs. Millepied and the lifetime winner of the Male Superhottie of the Federal Judiciary have finite Erdős – Bacon numbers.

In case you don’t recognize the magnitude of this achievement — and asking your forgiveness for indulging in my stereotypes of your respective spheres of knowledge —  David: Paul Erdős was a mid-20th century Hungarian mathematician known for his astonishing productivity and willingness to collaborate.  Erdős has a number of 0; a coauthor of a paper with him has an Erdős number of 1; a coauthor of that coauthor has an Erdős number of 2, and so on.  Nearly anyone who’s published in mathematics-heavy fields has a finite Erdős number.  It is a common pastime in the natural sciences to calculate one’s “Erdős number.”  I promise you this is a thing:  http://wwwp.oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths/.

Eugene: Kevin Bacon is a 20th-21st century American actor known for his willingness to be in just about any movie that will have him.  It is a common pastime in the parts of LA you probably don’t get out to see very much to calculate one’s “Bacon number.”  Bacon has a number of 0; a costar has a Bacon number of 1, and so on.  I promise you this is a thing.  https://oracleofbacon.org/help.php.

There is a very small group of people, however, with finite Erdős – Bacon numbers.  Because the set of people who publish in learned journals and the set of people who star in movies do not have much of an intersection, achieving a finite Erdős – Bacon number is also a thing:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number. As you can see from Wikipedia, Natalie Portman’s Erdős – Bacon number is 7, achieved from a paper she co-authored as a Harvard undergraduate.  Everyone I’ve ever seen with a finite Erdős – Bacon number is either an actor with a freakish academic interest in their past, or a scientist who got a cameo role playing himself.

Except for Judge K, who has an admirable Erdős – Bacon number of 12.

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Here’s my proof: Plagiarize, rewrite, ignore, express concern about Article I judges without normal outside interests, but I will  claim precedence.  (Though if either of you does publish this, it becomes a citable source for Wikipedia.  Just saying.)

Judge K’s Bacon number is 2: 

As is well-known, he starred in Atlas Shrugged: Part II:  See  https://abovethelaw.com/2012/08/a-star-is-born-chief-judge-alex-kozinski-coming-to-a-movie-theater-near-you/. His co-star was Jason Beghe (son of another Tax Court judge, btw), who played Hank Reardon.

Jason Beghe appeared in X-Men: First Class with Kevin Bacon.

Judge K’s Erdős number is 10:

Paul Erdős, Alan Hoffman, et al. “Maximum degree in graphs of diameter,”  10 Networks 87 (1980).

Alan Hoffman, Uriel Rothblum, et al. “Line-sum-symmetric scalings of square nonnegative matrices,” Math. Programming Stud. No. 25 at 124 (1985).

Uriel Rothblum and Alvin Roth, “Risk aversion and Nash’s solution for bargaining games with risky outcomes,” 50 Econometrica 639 (1982).  (Prof. Roth won the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics.)

Alvin Roth and Richard Posner, et al., “The new market for federal judicial law clerks,” 74 U. Chi. L. Rev. 447 (2007).

Richard Posner and Eric Posner, “The demand for human cloning,” 27 Hofstra L. Rev. 579 (1999).

Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein, “Chevronizing foreign relations law,” 116 Yale L.J. 1170 (2007).

Cass Sunstein and Lawrence Lessig, “The president and the administration,” 94 Colum. L. Rev. 1 (1994).

Lawrence Lessig and Mark Lemley, “Open access to cable modems,” 22 Whittier L. Rev. 3 (2000).

Mark Lemley and Eugene Volokh, “Freedom of speech and injunctions in intellectual property cases,” 48 Duke L.J. 147 (1998).

Eugene Volokh and the Hon. Alex Kozinski, “Lawsuit, schmawsuit,” 103 Yale L.J. 463 (1993) (and, despite its age, still the leading article on the supplanting of Latin by Yiddish “as the spice in American legal argot.”)


I’m no mathematician, but adding a Bacon number of 2 and an Erdős number of 10 yields an impressive Erdős-Bacon number of 12.

But wait! Professor Volokh had this correction to Judge Holmes’s analysis:

Cool! But note that Kozinski’s Erdos number is no higher than 6, since Sasha’s is 5, http://www.volokh.com/posts/1181782963.shtml, and the Judge and Sasha cowrote “The Appeal.” That puts his Erdos-Bacon number at 8, even closer to Portman’s.

Awesome. Thanks to Judge Holmes and Professor Volokh for sharing these tidbits, and congratulations to Judge Kozinski on this latest achievement!

UPDATE (7/24/2015, 2:30 p.m.): Professor Sasha Volokh chimed in with one additional correction:

[The original email was] wrong in another way as well — in the erroneous 10-article Erdos link for Kozinski, it suggested that Sunstein’s Erdos number would be 6, whereas I believe it’s 5, both based on his co-authoring with Christine Jolls (to Al Roth) and based on his co-authoring with Richard Thaler (to Amos Tversky).

Duly noted!

Earlier: Natalie Portman Will Star In Ruth Bader Ginsburg Biopic
A Star Is Born: Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, Coming To A Movie Theater Near You