Obama's lawyers are defending Bush's claim that only the president, not Congress, may decide a sensitive foreign policy matter like the status of Jerusalem.

"The president has exclusive authority to recognize foreign governments … as well as their territorial limits," they argue in their brief to the Supreme Court. Congress has no authority, they write, to "override the executive branch's decades-long policy of neutrality with respect to the sovereignty over Jerusalem" — or to grant parents' wishes that their boy's passport says he was born in Israel.

Though Israel has controlled all of Jerusalem since the 1967 Middle East War, the U.S. and most other nations do not recognize its annexation of the eastern part of the city. The U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv.

The boy's parents filed a suit against the secretary of State for not following the law and its passport provision. Their case has bounced around for years. One judge initially ruled that the parents had no standing, but an appeals court disagreed. Then the appeals court said this was a "political question" beyond the power of the courts. The Supre