In a landmark decision about the current separation of powers in the United States the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel puts an end to a long-lasting controversy regarding the birth of Americans in Jerusalem land, a city that the U.S., by international policy, refuses to acknowledge as belonging to neither Israel nor Palestine.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine has gone on for almost a century in the Middle East, causing much of the friction in the region, and one of its main points has been which nation exactly "owns" the territory of Jerusalem, a city that bears strong significance to three different religions - and the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel decision will not acknowledge it as belonging to either country.
According to The New York Times, the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel ruling isn't only a landmark for the country's management of foreign affairs, but also for its own separation of powers: it also states that it should be the President, not the Congress, making decisions about this matter.
In 2002, Congress passed a law aimed at the U.S. State Department that would allow Americans born in Jerusalem to have their place of birth as "Israel" whenever their parents needed the designation, a law that attempted a symbolic recognition of Jerusalem as an Israel territory.
Although passed in 2002, the law was never enforced and now never will be as, through the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel ruling, this statute has been deemed unconstitutional.
CNN reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel decision, ruled that in more than a century there had been little doubt as to the fact that it was the President who was responsible for the recognition of sovereign States, not Congress, saying that the legislative body had overstepped its boundaries with the 2002 law.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the Supreme Court's Jerusalem Israel ruling has prompted Palestinian officials to say that the city is an "occupied territory," in the words of Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
