In Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977), the Supreme Court of the United States explained how the holding of a case should be viewed where there is no majority supporting the rationale of any opinion: "When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds.
[2] The Marks Rule has raised the following schools of thought regarding the appropriate basis for determining the holding in such fractured cases: (a) the narrowest analysis essential to the result derived from a combination of all concurring opinions,[3] (b) the concurring opinion offering the narrowest rationale,[4] or (c) only those parts of the concurring opinions which overlap and arrive at the same result.
Followers of the second rationale would find the concurring opinion offering the narrowest analysis to be the holding.
A good example of a plurality opinion can be found in the Supreme Court's decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).
In considering whether Indiana's voter identification law passed constitutional muster, three justices believed the proper analysis was to apply the balancing approach laid down in Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983).