There has been plenty of criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision granting former President Trump nearly total immunity for crimes connected to attempted subversion of the 2020 presidential election, but most of it stops short of the logical conclusion.

The opinion in Trump v. United States has been called “utterly circular, [tossing] aside the conservatives’ purported adherence to the plain text and meaning of the Constitution.” It has been described as a “decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times,” and most alarmingly, as removing “the final obstacle to presidential dictatorship.”

For all of that, however, most critics, including those who branded the decision “illegitimate” have been unwilling to question the legitimacy of the court itself.

By protecting Trump from the consequences of his crimes, and in other recent decisions, the Republican justices have discredited themselves as little more than political operatives in robes. They have steadily advanced Republican objectives by squelching individual rights, inventing new doctrines, abandoning precedents, and now, rewriting the Constitution.

There is no end in sight to the six justices’ partisanship, and the court’s alignment with the Republican Party seems bound to continue until there is a change in its composition. And that means court expansion.

Like every lawyer, I have been educated to respect the Supreme Court’s institutional role and see its stability as essential to our democracy. It is only reluctantly that I have come to recognize that court expansion — adding as many as four new seats — is the only way out of the right-wing stranglehold.

Not everyone is ready to concede that the court is dominated by partisan hacks. Justice Amy........

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