Zivotofsky v. Clinton (2012)
___ U.S. ___ (2012)
Vote: 8 (Ginsburg, Kagan, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Sotomayor, Thomas)
1 (Breyer)
Opinion of the Court: Roberts
Opinions Concurring in Judgment: Sotomayor, Alito
Dissenting Opinion: Breyer
FACTS
Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem. His mother requested that Zivotofsky’s place of birth be listed as “Israel” on a consular report of birth abroad and on his passport, pursuant to §214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That provision states: “For purposes of the registration of birth, certification of nationality, or issuance of a passport of a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen’s legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.”
U.S. officials refused the request, citing a State Department policy that prohibits recording “Israel” as the place of birth for those born in Jerusalem. Zivotofsky’s parents filed a suit on his behalf against the secretary of state. The district court dismissed the case, holding that it presented a nonjusticiable political question regarding Jerusalem’s political status. The D. C. Circuit affirmed, reasoning that the Constitution gives the executive branch the exclusive power to recognize foreign sovereigns and that the exercise of that power cannot be reviewed by the courts.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.
. . . The lower courts concluded that Zivotofsky’s claim presents a political question and therefore cannot be adjudicated. We disagree.
In general, the Judiciary has a responsibility to decide cases properly before it, even those it “would gladly avoid.” Our precedents have identified a narrow exception to that rule, known as the “political question” doctrine. We have explained that a controversy “involves a political question . . . where there is ‘a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it.’” In such a case, we have held that a court lacks the authority to decide the dispute before it. . . .
The existence of a statutory right, however, is certainly relevant to the Judiciary’s power to decide Zivotofsky’s claim. The federal courts are not being asked to supplant a foreign policy decision of the political branches with the courts’ own unmoored determination of what United States policy toward Jerusalem should be. Instead, Zivotofsky requests that the courts enforce a specific statutory right. To resolve his claim, the Judiciary must decide if Zivotofsky’s interpretation of the statute is correct, and whether the statute is constitutional. This is a familiar judicial exercise.
Moreover, because the parties do not dispute the interpretation of §214(d), the only real question for the courts is whether the statute is constitutional. At least since Marbury v. Madison we have recognized that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” That duty will sometimes involve the “[r]esolution of litigation challenging the constitutional authority of one of the three branches,” but courts cannot avoid their responsibility merely “because the issues have political implications.” INS v. Chadha (1983).
In this case, determining the constitutionality of §214(d) involves deciding whether the statute impermissibly intrudes upon Presidential powers under the Constitution. If so, the law must be invalidated and Zivotofsky’s case should be dismissed for failure to state a claim. If, on the other hand, the statute does not trench on the President’s powers, then the Secretary must be ordered to issue Zivotofsky a passport that complies with §214(d). Either way, the political question doctrine is not implicated. “No policy underlying the political question doctrine suggests that Congress or the Executive . . . can decide the constitutionality of a statute; that is a decision for the courts.”. . .
Framing the issue as the lower courts did, in terms of whether the Judiciary may decide the political status of Jerusalem, certainly raises those concerns. They dissipate, however, when the issue is recognized to be the more focused one of the constitutionality of §214(d). Indeed, both sides offer detailed legal arguments regarding whether §214(d) is constitutional in light of powers committed to the Executive, and whether Congress’s own powers with respect to passports must be weighed in analyzing this question. . . .
Recitation of these arguments—which sound in familiar principles of constitutional interpretation—is enough to establish that this case does not “turn on standards that defy judicial application.” Resolution of Zivotofksy’s claim demands careful examination of the textual, structural, and historical evidence put forward by the parties regarding the nature of the statute and of the passport and recognition powers. This is what courts do. The political question doctrine poses no bar to judicial review of this case.
To say that Zivotofsky’s claim presents issues the Judiciary is competent to resolve is not to say that reaching a decision in this case is simple. Because the District Court and the D. C. Circuit believed that review was barred by the political question doctrine, we are without the benefit of thorough lower court opinions to guide our analysis of the merits. Ours is “a court of final review and not first view.” Ordinarily, “we do not decide in the first instance issues not decided below.” In particular, when we reverse on a threshold question, we typically remand for resolution of any claims the lower courts’ error prevented them from addressing. We see no reason to depart from this approach in this case. Having determined that this case is justiciable, we leave it to the lower courts to consider the merits in the first instance.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, WITH WHOM JUSTICE BREYER JOINS . . . CONCURRING IN PART AND CONCURRING IN THE JUDGMENT.
As this case illustrates, the proper application of Baker’s six factors has generated substantial confusion in the lower courts. I concur in the Court’s conclusion that this case does not present a political question. I write separately, however, because I understand the inquiry required by the political question doctrine to be more demanding than that suggested by the Court. . . .
In my view, the Baker factors reflect three distinct justifications for withholding judgment on the merits of a dispute. When a case would require a court to decide an issue whose resolution is textually committed to a coordinate political department, as envisioned by Baker’s first factor, abstention is warranted because the court lacks authority to resolve that issue. . . . In such cases, the Constitution itself requires that another branch resolve the question presented.
The second and third Baker factors reflect circumstances in which a dispute calls for decisionmaking beyond courts’ competence. “‘The judicial Power’ created by Article III, §1, of the Constitution is not whatever judges choose to do,” but rather the power “to act in the manner traditional for English and American courts.” That traditional role involves the application of some manageable and cognizable standard within the competence of the Judiciary to ascertain and employ to the facts of a concrete case. When a court is given no standard by which to adjudicate a dispute, or cannot resolve a dispute in the absence of a yet-unmade policy determination charged to a political branch, resolution of the suit is beyond the judicial role envisioned by Article III. . . .
The final three Baker factors address circumstances in which prudence may counsel against a court’s resolution of an issue presented. Courts should be particularly cautious before forgoing adjudication of a dispute on the basis that judicial intervention risks “embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question,” would express a “lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government,” or because there exists an “unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made.”
Rare occasions implicating Baker’s final factors, however, may present an “‘unusual case’” unfit for judicial disposition. When such unusual cases arise, abstention accommodates considerations inherent in the separation of powers and the limitations envisioned by Article III, which conferred authority to federal courts against a common-law backdrop that recognized the propriety of abstention in exceptional cases. . . .
To be sure, it will be the rare case in which Baker’s final factors alone render a case nonjusticiable. But our long historical tradition recognizes that such exceptional cases arise, and due regard for the separation of powers and the judicial role envisioned by Article III confirms that abstention may be an appropriate response. . . .
In my view, it is not whether the evidence upon which litigants rely is common to judicial consideration that determines whether a case lacks judicially discoverable and manageable standards. Rather, it is whether that evidence in fact provides a court a basis to adjudicate meaningfully the issue with which it is presented. The answer will almost always be yes, but if the parties’ textual, structural, and historical evidence is inapposite or wholly unilluminating, rendering judicial decision no more than guesswork, a case relying on the ordinary kinds of arguments offered to courts might well still present justiciability concerns.
In this case, however, the Court of Appeals majority found a political question solely on the basis that this case required resolution of an issue “textually committed” to the Executive Branch. Because there was no such textual commitment, I respectfully concur in the Court’s decision to reverse the Court of Appeals.
JUSTICE ALITO, CONCURRING IN THE JUDGMENT.
This case presents a narrow question, namely, whether the statutory provision at issue infringes the power of the President to regulate the contents of a passport. This case does not require the Judiciary to decide whether the power to recognize foreign governments and the extent of their territory is conferred exclusively on the President or is shared with Congress. Petitioner does not claim that the statutory provision in question represents an attempt by Congress to dictate United States policy regarding the status of Jerusalem. Instead, petitioner contends in effect that Congress has the power to mandate that an American citizen born abroad be given the option of including in his passport and Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) what amounts to a statement of personal belief on the status of Jerusalem. . . .
Under our case law, determining the constitutionality of an Act of Congress may present a political question, but I do not think that the narrow question presented here falls within that category. Delineating the precise dividing line between the powers of Congress and the President with respect to the contents of a passport is not an easy matter, but I agree with the Court that it does not constitute a political question that the Judiciary is unable to decide.
JUSTICE BREYER, DISSENTING.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR [writes] that the circumstances in which . . . prudential considerations lead the Court not to decide a case otherwise properly before it are rare. I agree. But in my view we nonetheless have before us such a case. Four sets of prudential considerations, taken together, lead me to that conclusion.
First, the issue before us arises in the field of foreign affairs. (Indeed, the statutory provision before us is a subsection of a section that concerns the relation between Jerusalem and the State of Israel.)
The Constitution primarily delegates the foreign affairs powers “to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative,” not to the Judiciary. . . . [T]he creation of wise foreign policy typically lies well beyond the experience or professional capacity of a judge. At the same time, where foreign affairs is at issue, the practical need for the United States to speak “with one voice and ac[t] as one,” is particularly important.
The result is a judicial hesitancy to make decisions that have significant foreign policy implications, as reflected in the fact that many of the cases in which the Court has invoked the political-question doctrine have arisen in this area. . . .
Second, if the courts must answer the constitutional question before us, they may well have to evaluate the foreign policy implications of foreign policy decisions. The constitutional question focuses upon a statutory provision. . . .
Were the statutory provision undisputedly concerned only with purely administrative matters (or were its enforcement undisputedly to involve only major foreign policy matters), judicial efforts to answer the constitutional question might not involve judges in trying to answer questions of foreign policy. But in the Middle East, administrative matters can have implications that extend far beyond the purely administrative. Political reactions in that region can prove uncertain. And in that context it may well turn out that resolution of the constitutional argument will require a court to decide how far the statute, in practice, reaches beyond the purely administrative, determining not only whether but also the extent to which enforcement will interfere with the President’s ability to make significant recognition-related foreign policy decisions.
Certainly the parties argue as if that were so. Zivotofsky, for example, argues that replacing “Jerusalem” on his passport with “Israel” will have no serious foreign policy significance. . . .
At the same time, the Secretary argues that listing Israel on the passports (and consular birth reports) of Americans born in Jerusalem will have significantly adverse foreign policy effects. She says that doing so would represent “‘an official decision by the United States to begin to treat Jerusalem as a city located within Israel,’” that it “would be interpreted as an official act of recognizing Jerusalem as being under Israeli sovereignty,” and that our “national security interests” consequently “would be significantly harmed.” Such an action, she says, “‘would signal, symbolically or concretely, that’” the United States “‘recognizes that Jerusalem is a city that is located within the sovereign territory of Israel,’” and doing so, “‘would critically compromise the ability of the United States to work with Israelis, Palestinians and others in the region to further the peace process.’” She adds that the very enactment of this statutory provision in 2002 produced headlines in the Middle East stating the “the U. S. now recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”
A judge’s ability to evaluate opposing claims of this kind is minimal. At the same time, a judicial effort to do so risks inadvertently jeopardizing sound foreign policy decisionmaking by the other branches of Government. How, for example, is this Court to determine whether, or the extent to which, the continuation of the adjudication that it now orders will itself have a foreign policy effect?
Third, the countervailing interests in obtaining judicial resolution of the constitutional determination are not particularly strong ones. Zivotofsky does not assert the kind of interest, e.g. , an interest in property or bodily integrity, which courts have traditionally sought to protect. Nor, importantly, does he assert an interest in vindicating a basic right of the kind that the Constitution grants to individuals and that courts traditionally have protected from invasion by the other branches of Government. . . .
The interest that Zivotofsky asserts, however, is akin to an ideological interest. And insofar as an individual suffers an injury that is purely ideological, courts have often refused to consider the matter, leaving the injured party to look to the political branches for protection. This is not to say that Zivotofsky’s claim is unimportant or that the injury is not serious or even that it is purely ideological. It is to point out that those suffering somewhat similar harms have sometimes had to look to the political branches for resolution of relevant legal issues.
Fourth, insofar as the controversy reflects different foreign policy views among the political branches of Government, those branches have nonjudicial methods of working out their differences. The Executive and Legislative Branches frequently work out disagreements through ongoing contacts and relationships, involving, for example, budget authorizations, confirmation of personnel, committee hearings, and a host of more informal contacts, which, taken together, ensure that, in practice, Members of Congress as well as the President play an important role in the shaping of foreign policy. Indeed, both the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch typically understand the need to work each with the other in order to create effective foreign policy. In that understanding, those related contacts, and the continuous foreign policy-related relationship lies the possibility of working out the kind of disagreement we see before us. Moreover, if application of the political-question “doctrine ultimately turns, as Learned Hand put it, on ‘how importunately the occasion demands an answer,’” the ability of the political branches to work out their differences minimizes the need for judicial intervention here.
The upshot is that this case is unusual both in its minimal need for judicial intervention and in its more serious risk that intervention will bring about “embarrassment,” show lack of “respect” for the other branches, and potentially disrupt sound foreign policy decisionmaking. For these prudential reasons, I would hold that the political-question doctrine bars further judicial consideration of this case. And I would affirm the Court of Appeals’ similar conclusion.
With respect, I dissent.