The NYTimes and the Jerusalem Birth Registration Matter

Its Adam Liptak reviews the upcoming Supreme Court review of whether the President can avoid referring to Jerusalem as Israel's capital in Question of Birth Becomes One of President’s Power


Excerpts:

Menachem Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem. But was he born in Israel? Congress says yes. In 2002, it directed the State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” in passports of American children born in Jerusalem if their parents ask...But [President George W.] Bush also said he would not obey it. The 2002 law, Mr. Bush said, “impermissibly interferes with the president’s constitutional authority to conduct the nation’s foreign affairs and to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

...This fall, not long after Menachem turns 9, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in his case, which seeks to force the executive branch to follow the 2002 law...A federal appeals court in Washington ruled against Menachem, saying the conflict between the branches was the sort of political question not fit for judicial resolution. Judge Harry T. Edwards, in a statement issued when the full appeals court refused to rehear the case, said the ruling “calls into question the role of a federal court in our system of justice.”...He went on to say that he would have ruled for the executive branch.

...The justices instead not only agreed to hear the case [after the Obama administration urged the court no to], M.B.Z. v. Clinton, No. 10-699, but also directed the two sides to address the broad question of whether the law “impermissibly infringes the president’s power to recognize foreign sovereigns.”

...In its brief to the court, the administration warned about the consequences of a ruling against executive authority over this area. Ever since the Truman administration, the brief said, “the United States’ consistent policy has been to recognize no state as having sovereignty over Jerusalem, leaving the issue to be decided by negotiation between the parties to the Arab-Israeli dispute.”  Allowing Congress to interfere, the brief went on, “would critically compromise the United States’ ability to help further the Middle East peace process.”

[Representative Anthony D. Weiner, the New York Democrat who resigned last month had] filed a supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to use the case to hold unconstitutional the use of “presidential signing statements as a backdoor veto.” “The court should seize the opportunity to address this constitutional issue — so important, yet otherwise so unlikely to receive judicial scrutiny,” Mr. Weiner’s brief said. “The opportunity may never recur.”

Did you know there's a Jerusalem in New Zealand, and England and in the United States, too?

If they don't register "Israel", how will we know where the baby was born?

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