In Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s 11 years on the Supreme Court, his unfolding legacy has been marked by a debate over whether his very occasional liberal votes in major cases were the acts of a statesman devoted to his institution, a traitor to his principles or the legal umpire he said he aspired to be at his confirmation hearings.

This election could settle that debate.

If Donald J. Trump becomes president and follows through on his vow to appoint a conservative to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts will continue to lead a court dominated by five conservative justices. But the absence of Justice Scalia, the court’s longest serving and in some ways most dominant member when he died in February, means Chief Justice Roberts could lead in a more assertive way.

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“It’s been a long time since there was a chief justice who was in dissent across a wide range of important issues,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford.

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That notion cannot cheer Chief Justice Roberts, Professor Karlan said. “On a court with five liberals, the chief justice faces the prospect of assigning cases involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Bankruptcy Act,” she said, “while Justice Ginsburg assigns the cases that make the front page of The Times.”