President Trump abruptly fired dozens of officials in the past few days — including inspectors general, a member of the National Labor Relations Board and career prosecutors — in ways that apparently violated federal laws, setting up the possibility of lawsuits.

But the prospect of getting dragged into court may be exactly what Mr. Trump’s lawyers are hoping for. There is a risk that judges may determine that some of the dismissals were illegal, but any rulings in the president’s favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power to control the federal government.

Some legal experts say the purges underway appear to be custom-made opportunities for the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority to strike down the statutes any legal challenges would be based on, furthering its trend in recent years of expanding presidential authority.

“On one level, this seems designed to invite courts to push back because much of it is illegal and the overall message is a boundless view of executive power,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration. “But really, they are clearly setting up test cases.”

Five of the nine Supreme Court justices worked as executive branch lawyers during the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. Their legal teams were both defined by an expansive view of executive power, including developing theories of the Constitution that would invalidate congressional restrictions on the White House.

The Reagan legal team, for example, created the so-called unitary executive theory. It holds that the president must wield exclusive control of the executive branch, so laws passed by Congress that give independence to other officials are unconstitutional. A key application is that presidents must be able to fire any executive branch official at will.