The Supreme Court was on the ballot last month, and Donald Trump’s win dashed progressive dreams of reforming the court or changing its personnel.

Meanwhile, conservatives face the temptation of pushing our constitutional jurisprudence in still more rightwing directions. Doing so would be a mistake — what our era of division and distrust needs is a less political jurisprudence.

For some time, constitutional law has been getting increasingly politicized. As the two main parties have polarized, each camp has advanced a rival constitutional vision aligned with its goals. Progressives understand the Constitution to advance social justice, protect sexual and reproductive autonomy, and enable flexible federal administrative solutions to problems like climate change. Conservatives read the same document to require governmental colorblindness, protect traditional religion, and limit administrative power. Both sides have dreamed, in effect, of achieving central policy goals through constitutional interpretation.

The GOP now has the upper hand in this game. With a 6-3 majority on the court and the chance to entrench their dominance, many will now urge the Republican-appointed justices to pursue the conservative vision still more aggressively.

But enacting a partisan program is not what the U.S. Constitution is supposed to do. On the contrary, the framers hoped to establish a framework of governance that would limit the “spirit of party,” as George Washington put it. In an era of acute........

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