A second deadlock, in United States v. Texas, No. 15-674, effectively destroyed President Obama’s plan to shield as many as five million immigrants from deportation. But it could have been worse for the president. While the tie vote left in place an appeals court decision blocking the effort, Justice Scalia, if he had been alive, would almost certainly have provided the fifth vote for a comprehensive rebuke to what Republicans say is a pattern of unconstitutional overreach by Mr. Obama.

The alternative to a deadlock was sometimes a muddle. In May, the court unanimously returned a major case on access to contraception, Zubik v. Burwell, No. 14-1418, to the lower courts for further consideration in the hope that the two sides could somehow settle their differences. “The court expresses no view on the merits” of the case, the unsigned opinion said.

If an eight-member court was deadlocked or toothless, it turned out that a seven-member court was prepared to take a major step. In Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 14-981, a long-running challenge to a race-conscious admission program at the University of Texas, Austin, the court was missing both Justice Scalia and Justice Elena Kagan, who had recused herself because she worked on the case as solicitor general.

The case had generally been viewed as a threat to affirmative action, particularly after the court agreed to take a second look at it last June. Instead, Justice Kennedy, abandoning his earlier hostility to race-conscious programs, joined the court’s remaining liberals to endorse the Texas program by a 4-to-3 vote. If Justice Scalia had been alive, the case would almost certainly have ended in a deadlock.

Justice Scalia was a dominant presence on the court, and his influence could exceed the power of his single vote. But it is also possible that Justice Scalia played a role in pushing Justice Kennedy to the left. When the Fisher case was argued in December, Justice Scalia’s comments from the bench brought aspects of it into vivid relief. He said that some minority students may be better off at “a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”

“I don’t think it stands to reason,” Justice Scalia said, “that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”