Term Limits

The president, the governor in most states, and executive officials in many local governments are limited to a fixed number of terms in office—most commonly, two four-year terms. The limits, most of which were enacted in the twentieth century, reflected a widespread popular concern with allowing a single individual to gain too much power in office over time.

A strong movement emerged in the 1990s to impose similar term limits on state legislators and members of Congress. Voters in twenty-three states approved ballot measures to impose congressional limits, but the Supreme Court in 1995 invalidated the congressional term limits by ruling that they could be enacted only by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Nineteen states have successfully imposed limits on state legislators that generally range from six to twelve years in office. Courts overturned limits in two additional states: Massachusetts and Washington.

Advocates said the idea of term limits—or “rotation in office”—had historical precedents in ancient Greece and Rome, the Renaissance city-states of Florence and Venice, and at least three of the American colonies. The Articles of Confederation included a provision limiting delegates to the Continental Congress to three years in office over a six-year period.

An early draft of the Constitution also included a tenure limitation for members of what was to become the House of Representatives, but the provision was dropped without dissent or debate. Alexander Hamilton also persuaded the delegates to the Constitutional Convention not to require rotation for the presidency. Anti-Federalists complained about the lack of a rotation provision in their unsuccessful effort to prevent ratification of the Constitution.

Despite the lack of mandatory tenure restrictions, voluntary retirement from federal office was common through the nineteenth century. George Washington unintentionally established a precedent by voluntarily stepping down from the presidency after completing his second four-year term; no president until Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to seek a third term. Turnover in Congress was high through the 1800s, above 40 percent for the House in most years.

Longer congressional careers became more common in the twentieth century. The national government had only limited impact on day-to-day life in the country before 1900. But the rise of the federal administrative state and the emergence of the United States as a major military and diplomatic power made Washington a much more important place for Congress and president alike.

Presidents' Two-Term Limit