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Press Release: APN Welcomes Court Decision on Jerusalem

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Americans for Peace Now welcomes the ruling of the US Federal Appeals court rejecting efforts by Congress to legislate U.S. policy with respect to Jerusalem. The Court affirmed in its ruling that, as APN has long argued, this sensitive foreign policy issue constitutionally falls under the president's foreign policy prerogative. 

The court's ruling underscores the fact that this case has never truly been about how Jerusalem is recorded in passports of Americans born in that city. Rather, it is about longstanding efforts by Congress to wrest control over foreign policy-making away from the executive branch, including on the extraordinarily sensitive issue of U.S. policy on Jerusalem. 

As APN argued previously, this country's founding fathers sought to at least partially immunize the determination of foreign policy from the pressures and vagaries of passion and populism - forces to which the legislate branch is far more exposed than the executive. APN believes that foreign policy issues related to Jerusalem are the quintessential example of why they believed, correctly, that it was important to do so.

For background on APN's position on this case, see: 

* Our October 2011 press release

* Our November 2011 Haaretz op-ed 

* Our Supreme Court amicus brief