6 Major Supreme Court Cases That Would Have Been Different Without Scalia

By Eyder Peralta

Published February 14, 2016 at 5:06 PM EST

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Saturday in Washington, DC, following the announcement of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In terms of the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is monumental. With Scalia, the court had four reliable conservative votes and, in Justice Kennedy, the court had a conservative swing vote.

That led to many decisions that were decided by a razor thin 5-to-4 margin. To gauge Scalia's importance, we dug through the Supreme Court Database and found that during Obama's presidency, 53 cases have been decided by a 5-4 majority that included Scalia.

Here are six cases that could have turned out vastly different without Scalia:

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