Tuesday round-up

Briefly:

• At HuffPost, Daniel Marans notes that “[e]xpanding the Supreme Court, an increasingly popular reform among some progressive activists, is not politically costly for Democrats, according to an academic survey commissioned by a group that supports the idea.”
• Veronica Stracqualursi reports at CNN that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week “reiterated his position that the GOP-led Senate would confirm a nominee to any Supreme Court vacancy that occurred this election year, despite leaving a seat vacant in 2016 and preventing President Barack Obama’s nominee from consideration.”
• For this blog, John Elwood breaks down a new memorandum from the Supreme Court clerk’s office “addressing cert-stage pleadings and the scheduling of cases for consideration at the court’s periodic conferences,” which explains “in detail a number of the court’s practices on cert-stage scheduling that in the past largely traveled by word of mouth.”

• In an op-ed for The New York Times, Sarah Vowell weighs in on Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which asks whether Montana’s invalidation of a law that created tax credits to provide scholarships for families who send their children to private schools, including religious schools, was constitutional, arguing that “[w]hile the ’72 [Montana] Constitution’s no-aid clause looks similar to its predecessor in the 1889 original, the update was motivated by fortifying public schools, not shunning people of faith.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]
• At The World and Everything in It (podcast), Mary Reichard discusses the oral argument in Shular v. United States, which asks what standard should be used to determine what constitutes a “serious drug offense” under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
• At Vox, Ian Millhiser writes that “the Supreme Court will hear a case early next month,” Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “that could make [Justice Antonin] Scalia’s theory of the unitary executive,” which asserts that “no one in the executive branch should be independent of the president, and that such independence is in fact constitutionally illegitimate,” “the law of the land.”

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