Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States. Congress passed the amendment on March 21, 1947. It was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states on February 27, 1951.

Text

Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

History

Some historians point to George Washington's decision against a third term as evidence that the founders saw a self-imposed two-term limit as a bulwark against a monarchy. Nevertheless, in his Farewell Address, Washington both reveals he considered not standing for reelection in 1792, and that his decision not to seek a third term in 1796 was due to age, not intention to set precedent. Nine years later, Thomas Jefferson further contributed to the convention of a voluntary two-term limit when he wrote in 1807, "if some termination to the services of the chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life." Jefferson’s immediate successors, James Madison and James Monroe, adhered to the two-term principle as well. In a new political atmosphere several years later, Andrew Jackson continued the precedent.