Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky. Photo: YouTube Screenshot.

Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky

Supreme Court petitioner 

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 struck down as unconstitutional a congressional attempt to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their birthplace on passports, affirming the principle that the president alone has the power to recognize foreign nations.

The high-profile case centered on Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, a boy born in 2002 who made his second trip to the Supreme Court to present the justices with a major separation-of-powers case.

The divided court treaded carefully in dealing with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as previously unsettled disputes between presidents and Congress about the conduct of foreign policy.