Editorial of The New York Sun | May 8, 2011
It looks like the decades-long standoff between the Congress and the President over the question of Jerusalem may finally be brought to a head, in a lawsuit brought against the Secretary of State of the United States by — only in America —a nine-year-old boy. The Supreme Court last week brushed aside the objections of Mrs. Clinton, who is worried that Congress may win a say in the Jerusalem question, and agreed to the appeal of the child, Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, who was born at Jerusalem in 2002 and wants the certificate of birth abroad issued by the American embassy to list his birthplace as Israel.
The State Department is required to accede to such a request, according to a law, part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, passed by Congress in 2002. But when President George W. Bush affixed his signature to the law, he issued a so-called signing statement objecting to that requirement, saying it infringed on his constitutional prerogatives as president. President Obama seems to be taking the same position, as Mrs. Clinton is refusing to carry out the law, even though she was in the Senate when it passed the world’s greatest deliberative body by unanimous consent. It has to be the first time a high-level Democrat is supporting Mr. Bush on one of the signing statements they accused him of using too often.
One of the ironies in the case is that the lawyer for Master Zivotofsky, Nathan Lewin, a legendary practitioner at the constitutional bar, won certiorari in the case by arguing, in effect, that it was much less of a big deal than Mrs. Clinton is making it out to be. On its face his petition for a hearing doesn’t ask the Supreme Court to sort out who owns Jerusalem or who gets to decide the question or who runs foreign policy of the United States. Congress, after all, passes laws in respect of all kinds of things that affect foreign policy. What he does suggest is that the Congress has enough power to write the rules for issuing certificates of birth abroad and to require the government to accede to parents’ wishes on the matter.
The justices of the Supreme Court, in their order saying they’d take the case, signaled that they see the standoff between the Congress and the presidency as a central issue. The editor of the Sun, writing about the case in the Wall Street Journal, quoted the Supreme Court’s order, as specifically instructing the lawyers to focus on whether the law “impermissibly infringes the President’s power to recognize foreign sovereigns.” The power to which the Court refers stems from language in Article II of the Constitution, which is the article that creates the presidency and states that the president “shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers.”
If the justices are going to dive into this, they could dive deep, because the feuding over this clause goes back to the founding of the Republic. Alexander Hamilton, a tribune of a strong presidency, reckoned in a piece he wrote in 1793 that the language gave the president the right “to decide the obligations of the Nation with regard to foreign Nations.” Thos. Jefferson was so upset by Hamilton’s aggrandizement of executive power, as reported by historian James Roger Sharp, that he “exhorted Madison” to “‘take up your pen . . .and cut him to pieces in the face of the public.’” How the Supreme Court is likely to rule is hard to predict, in part because it’s not so easy a question to sort out ideologically. For in the same sentence of the Constitution in which the president gets the power to receive ambassadors, he also is given the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
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For our part, we wish the Supreme Court luck. Your editor still remembers back when he was editor of the Forward and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan strode into an editorial meeting. The senator sat down and pulled out of his pocket a copy of the internal State Department telephone book. Then he dilated for half an hour over how outrageous it was that it didn’t list Jerusalem as part of Israel, even though Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. That was at the beginning of the long — and so far vain — quest of the Congress to get the embassy moved. The notion that the president is supreme in foreign affairs had a particular allure during the years when the Soviet Union was on the march, President Reagan was in the White House, and Congress was trying to limit the president’s war powers. We’ve been prepared to support a strong president, even when he’s a Democrat. But the clause about faithfully executing the law is no small matter either. And when Congress has acted as unambiguously as it has in respect of the rights of an American born at Jerusalem, it strikes us that the Supreme Court has the opportunity here use the plea of a child to remind us that we are a nation of laws not of men.
Nah! It’s an “oil” thing.
Yamit, you said,
It’s a “Birther” thing — anyone who mentions a “birth certificate” is considered a looney. Ask Shy Guy to explain the legal ins and outs of it.
What makes you think it’s an Executive power, rather than a Legislative one, Sabril? After all, if the US ratification of international treaties is the province of the Senate, would not this matter lie SIMILARLY within their purview?
I suggest that it is the State Department’s age-old proclivity for acting as an independent power unto itself. Its bureaucracy needs to be cleaned out, Yamit, so it can be properly leashed.
“Why is it that the United States has diplomatic relations with Israel, but won’t recognize it on a birth certificate? Why does the State Department have the audacity to deny what is fact?
Isn’t the State Department, by refusing to mention a city of birth for US citizens born in Israel, saying that Israel isn’t actually a nation? Aren’t they denying the sovereignty of Israel?”
Is this more Jardyce vs. Jarncyce? How much are the lawyers making?
New Jerusalem Embassy Bill Circulating in House
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are circulating a bill that would strip the president of his power to waive a law requiring him to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
The bill, launched March 10 and sponsored by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the chairman of the House’s Europe Subcommittee, is also backed by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Middle East Subcommittee, which all but guarantees its passage in the Foreign Affairs Committee and referral to the full House.
So far the bill has 10 Republican sponsors and two Democrats, including Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.
Obama Extends Jerusalem Embassy Waiver
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Thursday, June 3, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama has extended a waiver for an additional six months delaying the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Obama’s waiver, issued Wednesday, follows in the footsteps of predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who also extended the waiver every six months since the law was adopted in 1995 calling for the move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Presidents are permitted to delay the move on national security grounds.
Some Jewish groups have pushed for the United States to move the embassy as a way to bolster Israeli claims to the city. Those favoring the use of the waiver say that such a step would anger the Arab world and put the United States in the position of taking sides on an issue that should be settled in peace talks.
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That there is a law not only recognizing Jerusalem as Israels Capital by requiring the American embassy to be moved from TA to Jerusalem means that the congress recognizes Jers. as integral to Israel, nobody claims the president by waiver can’t delay implementation of the law but that has nothing to do with the recognition that Jerusalem is part of Israel.
This law should help the kids case.
It’s a close one, but I think the Supreme Court should rule against the child on the grounds that it’s the president’s decision to make, not congress’ decision. Of course, in this case the president happens to be wrong and congress happens to be right, but still.