The president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”: is that a duty, or a power? Over time, with the growth of the executive branch and the American administrative state, “presiders” have become “deciders”: hence Elena Kagan’s famous law review novella “Presidential Administration,” a how-to guide of sorts. Kagan is now on the Supreme Court, of course, and yesterday had to deal with just this issue. A 2002 law allows Americans born in Jerusalem to place on their passports, as the place of their birth, “Israel.” President George W. Bush objected at the time, in one of his many signing statements, that this bound the executive branch to a diplomatic position it did not hold (U.S. policy is neutral on the provenance of Jerusalem) and should be under no obligation to assert. President Obama has affirmed this position. And so Menachem Zivotovsky (or rather his parents – Menachem was born in 2002) has now sued to uphold the plain text of the statute. The oral arguments for...