After 226 years, a constitutional answer to a controversial question

The Constitution sometimes gathers its meaning slowly, but it is most unusual for a basic issue of government power to be left unsettled in a final way for more than two centuries.  But that is the history surrounding a core question: who in government decides whether the U.S. will recognize the legitimacy of another nation’s government?

Many have long assumed that the answer was: the President.  Even George Washington thought that, and so have his successors.  But that was not the final or definitive answer, until just now: it is the answer given by a federal appeals court in Washington, in a case growing out of the ancient struggle over control of the holy city of Jerusalem. That controversy has run on for centuries, and the U.S. government has been trying to deal with it – or not deal with it – at least since Israel became an independent nation 65 years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/226-years-constitutional-answer-controversial-103408694.html