Tomorrow morning, the US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in a case filed on behalf of a 12 year-old boy, a case nearly as old as the boy himself. Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem to parents who were and are United States citizens, making him eligible at birth for United States citizenship like his parents, and therefore he is entitled to a United States passport. No one disputes any of that. The State Department insists that, because it does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city, the place of birth will be listed on the passport only as Jerusalem with no country. The family instead wants the passport to read Jerusalem, Israel. This is the entire dispute. Two separate presidential administrations under George W. Bush and Barack Obama have allowed this seemingly minor issue to evolve into a major conflict between the president and the Congress over the separation of powers. Rather than take the approach that what is printed on a passport does not bind the president in his conduct of foreign relations, the government has instead played a high-stakes game claiming that there is a potential to destabilize Arab-Israeli relations and damage the prestige of the United States. Congress passed a law in 2002 that says a United States citizen born in Jerusalem can choose whether their passport should include the word Israel as a place of birth. The State Department argues that this law is unconstitutional because the president has sole authority over foreign relations. In fact, the Supreme Court has never previously addressed the question of whether the ultimate power to recognize foreign nations rests only with the president or is shared with Congress. A similar issue arose under the Bill Clinton administration when Congress ordered that American citizens born in Taiwan could choose to be listed either from Taiwan or from China, and the State Department was worried about the diplomatic implications. In that situation, the Clinton administration decided to comply with the law and make statements that this did not alter American foreign policy, but in the Jerusalem case both presidents Buch and Obama refused to comply with the law and asserted that it is unconstitutional.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 22:48:23 +0000
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