A bare majority of Congress, acting in a special session called by former President Lucio Gutiérrez in December, 2004, ousted 27 of the 31 justices and replaced them with new members chosen by Congress, notwithstanding the lack of any provisions permitting impeachment of Supreme Court justices by Congress and the specific provisions giving the Court the power to select new members.

This was later reversed during 2002 in a landmark case before the US Supreme Court, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, in which the divided court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled the Ohio school voucher plan constitutional and removed any constitutional barriers to similar voucher plans in the future, with moderate justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O ' Connor and conservative justices William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas in the majority.

The county-court system consisted of a chief justice and two associates, chosen by a majority of the justices of the peace in the county.

Two justices in the same majority, given the opportunity, might write very different majority opinions ( as evidenced by many concurring opinions ); being assigned the opinion may also cement the vote of an Associate who is viewed as only marginally in the majority ( a tactic that was reportedly used to some effect by Earl Warren ).

It is said that some chief justices, notably Earl Warren and Warren Burger, sometimes switched votes to a majority they disagreed with to be able to use this prerogative of the Chief Justice to dictate who would write the opinion.

* Seven justices ( the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter ) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.

Though no single opinion of the Court commanded a majority, eight of the nine justices of the Court agreed that the Executive Branch does not have the power to hold indefinitely a U. S. citizen without basic due process protections enforceable through judicial review.

The majority of the justices, in the opinion, stated that the judge should take into account mitigating factors and other information which are usually of relevance during the sentencing phase.

Three years earlier seven justices had followed Frankfurter ’ s reasoning and joined his majority opinion in Gobitis.

However, the dissenting justices thought that the suggested warnings would ultimately lead to such a drastic effect — they apparently believed that once warned, suspects would always demand attorneys and deny the police the ability to seek confessions and accordingly accused the majority of overreacting to the problem of coercive interrogations.

Justice Powell's rationale, however, did not carry a majority of justices.

Except for three opening sections of the O ' Connor-Kennedy-Souter opinion, Casey was a divided judgment, as no other sections of any opinion were joined by a majority of justices.

" For example, in the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, involving whether Ohio could ban the showing of a French film called Les Amants ( French for The Lovers ), the Court ruled that the film was protected by the First Amendment, but could not agree as to a rationale, yielding four different opinions from the majority, with none garnering the support of more than two justices, as well as two dissenting opinions.

In the 1930s, during the New Deal, the majority of the Supreme Court justices gradually shifted their legal theory to allow for greater government regulation of the private sector under the commerce clause, thus paving the way for the Federal government to enact civil rights laws prohibiting both public and private sector discrimination on the basis of the commerce clause.

The Quebec City law, according to the majority of justices, created an effect where the chief of police would have to act in the role of a censor, deciding whether the literature was objectionable.

The Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. United States found that the government had not made a successful case for prior restraint of Free Speech, but a majority of the justices ruled that the government could still prosecute the Times and the Post for violating the Espionage Act in publishing the documents.

In place of a majority of politically right-wing and religiously conservative justices, he appointed new ones who were ideologically closer to him, including two women ( one of them an avowed atheist ).

Roosevelt proposed adding more justices to the court and creating a mandatory retirement age ; the changes would allow him to appoint an overwhelming majority to the court who be more sympathetic to his agenda, ensuring the safety of legislation passed by his party.

It was accepted that Hughes did not agree with the majority opinion's argument that the law's government subsidy regulations went beyond the powers of national government and was going to write a separate opinion upholding the act's subsidy provision while striking down the act's tax provision on the grounds that it was a coercive regulation rather than a tax measure until Roberts convinced Hughes he would side with him and the court's three liberal justices in future cases pertaining to the nation's agriculture which involved the Constitution's General Welfare Clause if he agreed to join his opinion.

Four associate justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy, are members of the Supreme Court, resulting in a Catholic majority on the court.

Instead, each of the nine justices wrote separately, with none of the five justices constituting the majority joining in the opinion of any other.

Mr. Justice Black led a reversing majority: `` Strict local rules of pleading cannot be used to impose unnecessary burdens upon rights of recovery authorized by federal law ''.

Steiner's continuing differences with Besant led him to separate from the Theosophical Society Adyar ; he was followed by the great majority of the membership of the Theosophical Society's German Section, as well as members of other national sections.

The discovery of chlorpromazine's psychoactive effects in 1952 led to greatly reduced use of restraint, seclusion, and sedation in the management of agitated patients, and also led to further research that resulted in the development of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and the majority of other drugs now used in the management of psychiatric conditions.

In the 1820s, the Russian-American Company, which administered a large portion of the North Pacific during a Russian led expansion of the fur trade, resettled many families to the Commander Islands ( currently, within the Aleutsky District of the Kamchatka Krai in Russia ) and to the Pribilof Islands ( currently in Alaska ), where there are currently established majority Aleut communities.

His superior command of Greek, and the fact that the vast majority of his writings were in Greek, led some in the West to claim that he was a Greek born in Alexandria.

In December 1993, Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, the son of previous president Eduardo Frei Montalva, led the Concertación coalition to victory with an absolute majority of votes ( 58 %).

This, however led to a stalemate in 2006 elections where both the left and the right each gained exactly 100 seats ; as many commenters point out, the earlier system would have given the right 3 – 4 seats majority.

After Smith's death, a succession crisis ensued, and the majority voted to accept the Quorum of the Twelve, led by Brigham Young, as the church's leading body.

The 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament ( Britain's first for 36 years ), following which the Conservatives ( led by David Cameron ), which had won the largest number of seats, formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to gain a parliamentary majority, ending 13 years of Labour government.

Public opposition and criticism have emerged, led by the EFA and gaining irregular mainstream media attention, with a majority of Australians reportedly " strongly against " its implementation.

In essence this led to a situation where a minority of this majority remained within the Central Committee ...

Most notably, in Round 15 against, the Bombers jumped the Saints early by kicking the first 16 points of the match and led for the majority of the match, only to lose the lead by halfway through the final quarter, and ultimately the match by just three points.

Sweeping political reforms in 1990 led to a new constitution, and the PDG garnered a large majority in the country's first multi-party elections in 30 years.

The failure of negotiations between Emperor Louis IV and the papacy led in 1338 to the declaration at Rhense by six electors to the effect that election by all or the majority of the electors automatically conferred the royal title and rule over the empire, without papal confirmation.

During these years policies were put in place which led to the rapid transformation of Malaysia ’ s economy and society, such as the controversial New Economic Policy, which was intended to increase proportionally the share of the economic " pie " of the bumiputras (" indigenous people ", which includes the majority Malays, but not always the indigenous population ) as compared to other ethnic groups — was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak.

Despite the British economy then being in recession, he led the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive election victory, winning the most votes in British electoral history ( 14 million ) in the 1992 general election, albeit with a much reduced majority in the House of Commons.

In the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority.

In November 1945, Tito's pro-republican People's Front, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, won the elections with an overwhelming majority, the vote having been boycotted by monarchists.

Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU / CSU to the first — and as of 2011, only — outright majority in a free German election.

The election resulted in a hung parliament with the Tories having the most votes but Labour having slightly more seats, and failed attempts by Heath to form a coalition with the Liberals led to the resignation of his government and the return of Harold Wilson as prime minister of a minority Labour government, which gained a three-seat majority at a second election later in the year.

With an overwhelming progovernment majority, it was largely the instrument of the BNP, led by Prime Minister Jonathan.

This led to an inflammatory speech by Guinean president Lansana Conté which blamed the refugees for the border destabilization and alleged that the vast majority of refugees were rebels.

In January 1912, the majority of the Bolshevik faction led by Lenin and a few Mensheviks held a conference in Prague and expelled their opponents from the party.

St-Laurent led the Liberals to another powerful majority in the 1953 federal election.