Jerusalem Born
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fresh off oral arguments in the Supreme Court, Alyza Lewin discusses Zivotofsky v. Kerry, which asks if Congress or the President has ultimate authority over passports. Plus, Yates v. U.S. debates whether grouper should qualify as "tangible objects."
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome to Amicus, Slate's legal podcast. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, Slate's Supreme Court correspondent. |
| 0:09.1 | And on this episode of the show, we're going to do a deep dive into one of the cases the Supreme Court heard just this week, a case with a 12-year-old boy at its center. |
| 0:18.7 | Manachim Zavitowski was born to American parents in Jerusalem back in 2002. |
| 0:23.6 | Earlier that same year, Congress passed a law that let U.S. citizens in that scenario |
| 0:28.6 | have Israel listed as their place of birth on their passports. |
| 0:32.6 | You see, since 1948, American policy has held that since the status of Jerusalem is disputed, it takes no position on whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. |
| 0:41.7 | If you're born in Jerusalem, your passport says only Jerusalem. |
| 0:45.8 | And so, President Bush attached a signing statement to that 2002 law, saying he just would not enforce the passport provision because it's his job, not Congresses, to administer foreign affairs. |
| 0:57.5 | Menacham's parents wanted Jerusalem Israel on his passport, but his passport was printed with only Jerusalem as his place of birth. |
| 1:04.7 | That same year, in 2002, Manacham's parents filed a suit against the State Department, |
| 1:09.7 | and since then this case has gone up and down through the court system, landing for the second time this week at the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| 1:17.2 | Arguing the case for the Zivitavkis was Elisa Lewin. |
| 1:20.2 | Her law partner and father, Nathan Lewin, argued the case the first time it came to the court back in 2012. |
| 1:26.2 | Monday was Elisa's turn. Welcome to Amicus, |
| 1:29.0 | Alisa Lewin. Thank you very much for having me. So I wonder if you can start off by explaining |
| 1:34.1 | the constitutional claims in this case, because it got spun in the press as a referendum on |
| 1:39.3 | the Supreme Court's views of Jerusalem as capital of Israel? What are the constitutional issues underlying the |
| 1:45.3 | case that folks maybe didn't quite get at the first pass? You're right. The media has presented |
| 1:50.6 | this as the court determining whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and that is actually |
| 1:55.7 | not what the court is going to be deciding in this case. The question that is before the court |
| 2:04.2 | is really twofold. One is whether what you put on a passport as a place of birth even amounts |
| 2:13.2 | to recognizing the sovereignty of a country. |
... |
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