Conservative hopes for a transformational term at the Supreme Court ended with Justice Antonin Scalia’s death this winter, and liberals instead prevailed on what are likely to be the term’s most influential decisions.

The cases and causes that had the right so excited at the beginning of the term — challenges to affirmative action, restrictions on abortion, complaints about labor union fees, bold attacks on the way electoral districts are drawn and President Obama’s use of executive power — ended either with liberal victories or draws that set no precedent.

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“The era of aggressive conservative legislation and litigation in the Supreme Court may largely be over, unless and until Justice Scalia is replaced by someone like-minded,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford University law professor and a leader in the liberal American Constitution Society. “Each of these cases was an attempt to push the law sharply to the right, and the court doesn’t seem to have the appetite for this.”