The Wednesday Letter #199 - 12/20/2023

THIS WEEK: Trump and the 14th Amendment; Them White Folk; Houthis; COP28; Stocks: One Final Push.

TRUMP AND THE 14TH AMENDMENT

We predicted in WL 181 and WL 193 that some states would invoke the 14th amendment to keep former President Trump off the ballot in 2024, an effort that would doom his bid to regain the presidency. Now that Colorado has done so, the question is how US Supreme Court justices will rule, if they agree to take up the case.

The three Democrat-appointed justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson will likely support the Colorado decision. Of the remaining six justices, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, at least three, Thomas, Gorsuch and Barrett (and possibly a fourth Kavanaugh), can be considered “originalists”. This is how a September article in The Conversation describes originalism:

“Originalism is the theory that judges are bound to interpret the Constitution as it would have been interpreted in the historical era when it was written. Understood this way, originalism is the id…