When you think of expanding the court, don’t think of it as “packing.” Think of it as “demilitarization.” The court shouldn’t just be expanded to give Democrats an edge, the goal needs to expanding until the replacement of a justice is routine, rather than a battle. …

The problem of having a small Supreme Court is so old, that Congress actually once cut the size the Court explicitly to prevent *Thomas Jefferson* from getting to name a new justice. That’s what you call a genuine structural issue. …

The size of the Court was jiggered both up and down after the Civil War, again with the purpose of keeping certain parties from being able to fill Court openings. This problem is intrinsic to a small body composed of lifetime appointments. …

Having the Court fixed at 9 for an extended period has not solved this problem, it’s made it worse. The current size of the Court makes every single appointment something that threatens to alter the balance in ways that alters millions of lives. …

The small Court means that people like Mitch McConnell don’t give a damn about any piece of legislation they’ve ever passed, or how well they represent their state. They measure their careers in justices. They subjugate their own branch into a platform for feeding another. …

The small Court generates huge incentives to cut deals, disrupt government, break rules, and simply cheat. At this moment, McConnell is unwilling to consider legislation that could save thousands of lives, because it might slow Barrett’s confirmation. This is a broken system. …

This problem has not been solved in 235+ years, because so long as the Court is small, it is an unsolvable problem. The value of every justice in a 9 member Court is too great. The solution is to make the Court larger, by at least a factor of two. …

A good number might be 26. That’s two for each appellate court, mirroring the original scheme. And yes, that means more justices would be added if more courts were added, for example, to support additional states or a growing population. …

In a 26 member Court, the death or retirement of any justice would no longer necessitate a national conflict, or compel Court -obsessed leaders in the Senate to burn down their own body’s rules for a partisan edge. The Senate might even rate legislation as more important. …

It would also mean that justices would feel freer to retire at any point, without feeling that the weight of the nation was on their shoulders. Appointments might still be for life, but justices would not be under such pressure to die with their robes on. …

And maybe that would be an appropriate legacy in the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death—a court where never again are the rights of millions left on one person’s shoulders. Where the burden can be laid down without is seeming like betrayal.