WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court justices have been dealing today with Middle Eastern politics. They heard arguments about a U.S. law that would allow Americans born in Jerusalem to list their birthplace as Israel on their U.S. passports.
It’s long been U.S. policy not to recognize any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Israel has controlled all of Jerusalem since the Six-Day War in 1967, and it’s proclaimed a united Jerusalem as its eternal capital. But the Palestinians have declared that east Jerusalem will be the capital of their independent state.
The Obama administration wants the law to be struck down, arguing that it’s up to the president to set foreign policy. The parents of an American who was born in Jerusalem are asking that the law be allowed to take effect.
Justice Elena Kagan called Jerusalem a “tinderbox,” and said the outcome of the case would be watched closely. She and other liberal justices appeared willing to accept the administration’s argument that changing the wording of passports would damage the U.S. role as a broker of peace in the Mideast, and hurt the president’s credibility.
But Justice Antonin Scalia asked why it should matter whether the law antagonizes another country, as long as it’s within the power of Congress to enact it.
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APPHOTO DCCK101: Menachem Zivotofsky, second from left, looks to his father Ari Zivotofsky, as he speaks to media outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, Nov. 3, 2014. The court is taking its second look at a dispute over the wording of U.S. passports for Americans born in Jerusalem, a case with potential foreign policy implications in the volatile Middle East. The parents of Menachem Zivotofsky, an American who was born in Jerusalem in 2002, is invoking a law passed just before the boy was born to try to force the State Department to list Menachem’s place of birth as Israel on his U.S. passport. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (3 Nov 2014)
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