Scenario One: In a country with only a decade-old democracy, the country's newly elected president is the ultimate political outsider – an activist lawyer, relatively young, whose party does not hold a majority in the parliament. His opponents launch fierce political attacks, and then impeach him for seemingly trivial offenses. The country's widely respected Constitutional Court is called on to decide whether to uphold the impeachment and decides that, although the president violated the law, he can retain office.

Scenario Two: In a hotly contested presidential campaign he looks certain to lose, the incumbent (another former activist lawyer) is shot the day before the election. He wins by a razor-thin margin, and the election is contested. Meanwhile, the executive and legislative branches set up competing investigative committees to determine the source of the shooting. The election case is sent to the courts to resolve, along with constitutional disputes about the investigative committees. The court holds that the election is valid, the investigation constitutional, and the leader takes power.