Make the Supreme Court lots bigger. It's not a priesthood, it should represent America. A Supreme Court of 59 justices would cut down on politics, mystique and the Ivy League, and be more like the legislature it's now called on to be.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Why the fight to replace Justice Kennedy will be 'epic' Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is officially retiring, which gives President Trump another opportunity to appoint a justice. Here’s why the stakes are so high.

Democrats –– or at least, Democrat-supporting law professors –– have a new plan: First, win control of the presidency and Congress in 2020. Then, as proposed by Harvard’s Ian Samuels, add six new (liberal) justices to the Supreme Court, taking the court to a total of 15 justices.

That will outweigh any justices Trump is able to appoint between now and then, even if he gets a couple of additional opportunities. The result will be a Supreme Court firmly in left-leaning hands for a generation.

What could go wrong?

Well, a few things. As George Mason Law’s Adam White notes, “Literally the safest way (to) guarantee Trump’s re-election is to start announcing that the next Democratic president will pack the court with six new Dem-filled seats. These professors might as well start MAGA-PAC 2020. They’re doing Steve Bannon’s job for him.”

There’s also the problem that, since the Constitution sets no limit on the size of the court, once the fairly longstanding tradition of nine justices is broken, the next time the GOP finds itself in power it could just raise the ante again.

As University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson remarks: “Please explain how this is stable? Why doesn’t it immediately unravel to a court of, say, 1001 justices? I’ll wait.”

We need more justices, less mystique

But let me make an unorthodox suggestion: Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. OK, 1,001 justices might be too many, but perhaps we should substantially expand the Supreme Court. After all, if the country can be thrown into a swivet by the retirement of a single 81-year-old man, it suggests that the Supreme Court has become too important, and too sensitive to small changes, to play its role constructively as it’s currently made up.

Increasing the number of justices would reduce the importance of any single retirement or appointment. And it would also reduce the mystique of the court, which I see as a feature, not a bug. Nine justices could seem like a special priesthood; two or three times that number looks more like a legislature, and those get less respect. Which would be fair.

More: Is America headed toward a civil war? Sanders, Nielsen incidents show it has already begun

Why is Harvard discriminating against Asian Americans? 'Diversity' is no excuse for racial bias.

Blame social media for making us more hasty and emotional. Can we fix this?

The Supreme Court, after all, isn’t made up of Platonic guardians. It’s made up of lawyers. If you asked Americans at random what kind of people they think are best suited to provide moral leadership, I rather doubt that lawyers would rank high on the list. The Supreme Court isn’t really some sacred body of great moral thinkers. Rather, as one of my constitutional law professors pointed out, it’s essentially a committee, a committee made up of lawyers. Underneath the robes and fancy building, that’s all it is.

Nonetheless, we’ve come to a place where the Supreme Court doesn’t just decide technical legal issues, but is called on to decide some of our most pressing moral and social questions. If the court is going to remain in that role, then it needs to be more representative of America as a whole, and less sensitive to minor changes that produce major shifts in its decisions. (And the near-universal belief that replacing Anthony Kennedy with a conservative will produce such a major shift is also an admission that the Supreme Court today isn’t about legal rigor or “neutral principles,” but essentially about politics.)

End the Harvard-Yale monopoly

So forget 15 justices. Let’s keep the nine we have who are appointed by the president, and add one from each state, to be appointed by governors, and then confirmed by the Senate. Fifty-nine justices is enough to ensure (I hope) that they aren’t all from Harvard and Yale as is the case now, and enough to limit the mystique of any particular justice. If the Supreme Court is going to function, as it does, like a super-legislature, it might as well be legislature-sized.

Making the Supreme Court less sensitive to shifts in the political winds would also benefit presidential and senatorial elections. Right now, they turn significantly on who will be appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court. If that’s less of an issue, then voters can evaluate candidates on how they’re likely to do their own jobs, rather than who they’ll support for a different one.

Is a mega-Supreme Court an idea whose time has come? If so, we can thank those who put the issue on the table.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @instapundit.