Term limits in the United States
In the United States, term limits restrict the number of terms of office an officeholder may serve. At the federal level, the president of the United States can serve a maximum of two four-year terms, limited by the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some State government offices are also term-limited, including executive, legislative, and judicial offices.
Term limits are also referred to as Rotation in Office.
Historical background[edit]
Constitution[edit]
Term limits date back to the American Revolution and prior to that, to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The Council of 500 in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta.
The ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates — tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls — who served a single term of one year, with re-election to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years (see cursus honorum). According to historian Garrett Fagan, office holding in the Roman Republic was based on "limited tenure of office" which ensured that "authority circulated frequently", helping to prevent corruption. An additional benefit of the cursus honorum or Run of Offices was to bring the "most experienced" politicians to the upper echelons of power-holding in the ancient republic.[1] Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in the office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.
Prior to independence, several colonies had already experimented with term limits. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut of 1639, for example, prohibited the colonial governor from serving consecutive terms by setting terms at one year's length, and holding "that no person be chosen Governor above once in two years."[2] Shortly after independence, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 set maximum service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at "four years in seven."[3] Benjamin Franklin's influence is seen not only in that he chaired the constitutional convention which drafted the Pennsylvania constitution, but also because it included, virtually unchanged, Franklin's earlier proposals on executive rotation. Pennsylvania's plural executive was composed of twelve citizens elected for the term of three years, followed by a mandatory vacation of four years.[4]
The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, established term limits for the delegates of the Continental Congress, mandating in Article V that "no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years."[5]
On October 2, 1789, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to examine forms of government for the impending union of the states. Among the proposals was that from the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson, urging a limitation of tenure, "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress."[6] The committee made recommendations, which as regards congressional term limits were incorporated unchanged into the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789). The fifth Article stated that "no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to the continental congress] for more than three years in any term of six years."[a]
Term limits in the Constitution[edit]
In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the federal constitution convention at Philadelphia omitted mandatory term limits from the U.S. Constitution of 1789. At the convention, some delegates spoke passionately against term limits such as Rufus King, who said "that he who has proved himself to be most fit for an Office, ought not to be excluded by the constitution from holding it."[7] The Electoral College, it was believed by some delegates at the convention, could have a role to play in limiting unfit officers from continuing.
When the states ratified the Constitution (1787–1788), several leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory limits to tenure as a dangerous defect, especially, they thought, as regards the presidency and the Senate. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the Constitution, as "most highly and dangerously oligarchic."[8] Both Jefferson[9] and George Mason[10] advised limits on re-election to the Senate and to the Presidency, because, said Mason, "nothing is so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation." The historian Mercy Otis Warren warned that "there is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well-timed bribery, will probably be done."[11]
Presidential term limits 1789–1952[edit]
Korzi (2013) says George Washington did not set the informal precedent for a two-term limit for the Presidency. He only meant he was too worn out to personally continue in office.[12] It was Thomas Jefferson who made it a principle in 1808. He made many statements calling for term limits in one form or another.[b]
The two-term limit tradition was maintained unofficially for 132 years. It was unsuccessfully challenged by Ulysses Grant in 1880,[13] Theodore Roosevelt in 1912,[14] and Woodrow Wilson in 1920.[15] Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully broke it in 1940, citing the outbreak of World War II.[16] The two Roosevelts are the only presidents to run for a third term in a general election; Grant and Wilson aimed to do so but failed to gain their parties' nominations. Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected in 1944 for a fourth term amidst the United States' engagement in World War II but died shortly afterwards in office. The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1951, formally establishing in law the two-term limit—although it did not apply to the incumbent Harry S. Truman, Franklin Roosevelt's successor. Truman declined to run for a third term in 1952.
The fact that "perpetuity in office" was not approached until the 20th century is due in part to the influence of rotation in office as a popular 19th-century concept. "Ideas are, in truth, forces," and rotation in office enjoyed such normative support, especially at the local level, that it altered political reality.[17][c]
During the Civil War, the Constitution of the Confederate States limited its president to a single six-year term. Only Jefferson Davis served as Confederate president, but he did not complete a full term in office before surrendering to the Union.
Era of incumbency[edit]
The practice of nomination rotation for the House of Representatives began to decline after the Civil War. It took a generation or so before the direct primary system, civil service reforms, and the ethic of professionalism worked to eliminate rotation in office as a common political practice. By the turn of the 20th century the era of incumbency was coming into full swing.
A total of eight presidents served two full terms and declined a third. Three presidents served one full term and refused a second. After World War II, however, an officeholder class had developed to the point that congressional tenure rivaled that of the U.S. Supreme Court, where tenure is for life.
Term limits movement[edit]
A movement in favor of term limits took hold in the early 1990s, and reached its apex in 1992 -- 1994, a period when seventeen states enacted term limits through state legislation or state constitutional amendments.[18]
Many of the laws enacted limited terms for both the state legislature and in the state's delegation to Congress. As they pertain to Congress, these laws were struck down as unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), in which the court ruled, on a 5–4 vote, that state governments cannot limit the terms of members of the national government.[18][19]
Where rotation in the legislative branch has withstood court challenges, term limits continue to garner popular support. As of 2002, the advocacy group "U.S. Term Limits" found that in the seventeen states where state legislators served in rotation, public support for term limits ranged from 60 to 78 percent.[20]
Some localities impose term limits for local office. Among the 20 most populous U.S. cities:
A two-term limit was imposed on New York City Council members and citywide elected officials (except for district attorneys) in New York City after a 1993 referendum (see the Charter of the City of New York, § 1138). On November 3, 2008, however, when Michael Bloomberg was in his second term of mayor, the City Council approved the extension of the two-term limit to a three-term limit; one year later, he was elected to a third term. The two-term limit was reinstated after a referendum in 2010.[91][92]
Negative impacts[edit]
Research studies have shown that legislative term limits increase legislative polarization,[93] reduce the legislative skills of politicians,[94][95][96] reduce the legislative productivity of politicians,[97] weaken legislatures vis-à-vis the executive,[98] and reduce voter turnout.[99] Parties respond to the implementation of term limits by recruiting candidates for office on more partisan lines.[100] States that implement term limits in the state legislatures are associated with also developing more powerful House speakers.[101]
Term limits have not proven to reduce campaign spending,[102] reduce the gender gap in political representation,[103] increase the diversity of law-makers,[104] or increase the constituent service activities of law-makers.[105] Term limits have been linked to lower growth in revenues and expenditures.[106]