Legislative Diplomacy After Zivotofsky

The Supreme Court’s decision in Zivotofsky v. Kerry held that Congress violated the separation of powers by enacting a statute that purported to compel the President to issue statements that contradict his policy of strict neutrality on the status of Jerusalem. In a recent post, I analyzed a disagreement between the majority and the dissent on the significance of foreign perceptions of U.S. law. I’ve now written a second post on the case, this time exploring Zivotofsky‘s implications for the constitutionality of diplomatic communications between Congress and foreign governments. It’s available over at Lawfare.

 

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The Necessity of Revising

keep-calm-and-revise-11I had a student a couple of years ago who described herself as a “one-sit wonder.” That is, in all of her previous schooling, she was quite adept at pounding out a more than serviceable paper in one sitting. Once she arrived in law school, she realized that style of writing was probably not going to work. (And, to be fair, it probably shouldn’t work in any other setting, either, but I do realize that it’s the way most students do write.)

There’s rarely anyone who can pound out what should be considered “final copy” in one sitting. Really good writers realize that writing is a process; the point of that first draft is to give you something to revise. In the writing process, you should be leaving behind a trail of drafts, some of them quite rough, before you finally arrive at the polished final copy.

Why is it important—no, necessary—to revise?

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The Role of Foreign Perceptions in Zivotofsky v. Kerry

On Monday the Supreme Court issued a long-awaited and important decision in Zivotofsky v. Kerry. This was a case about the nature of the President’s power to recognize foreign borders, and it required the Court to address the constitutionality of Section 214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2002, which entitled U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to have “Jerusalem, Israel” listed on their passports as the place of birth. While the statutory entitlement may seem rather mundane, it conflicted with the Executive Branch’s longstanding policy of strict neutrality on Jerusalem’s status by suggesting that the city is located within Israeli borders. Because the Executive policy dictated that passports list only “Jerusalem,” Presidents Bush and Obama refused to implement the statute. Thus the question: Who gets to decide whether the United States will recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory–Congress or the President?

The Court sided with the President and declared the statute unconstitutional. I wrote a post addressing one of the interesting issues in the case over at Lawfare; it’s available here.

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