term limits essay

May 24, 2024

Goldman School of Public Policy's Official Undergraduate Public Policy Journal at UC Berkeley

Congressional Term Limits are the Key to Maintaining Our Democracy

By  Michelle Tombu

T he democratic system of government in America was designed to most effectively serve the nation by vesting power in all its people. And yet it has increasingly become a weapon employed by individual politicians in fulfilling their sole objective of, first, garnering political power and then permanently remaining in it. An imposition of term limits for members of Congress has long been backed by a large majority of Americans on the impulse of fostering candid debate and forging a more progressive society – one which maintains the true integrity of our nation’s democracy. The current effects of congressional stagnation has resulted in more than 90% of House incumbents being continuously reelected year after year, with the reelection rate among Senators falling below 80% only three times total since 1982 [4]. Congressional term limits have the potential to ameliorate many of America’s most pressing political issues by “ counterbalancing incumbent advantages, ensuring congressional turnover, securing independent congressional judgment, and reducing election-related incentives for wasteful government spending” [1]. But perhaps most importantly, such a change will allow Congress to appear directly face to face with its own fragility, acquire a sense of its own transitoriness and potentially even come to learn ways in which to sustain legitimacy. Term limits are a very necessary corrective to the current political inequalities which perpetually avail incumbents and inevitably hinder their challengers. 

The 22nd Amendment of the United States Constitution imposes a two term limit on all presidencies as a check on federal executive power. P residential term limits sustain the democracy of the position and ensure a single candidate does not cling on to power for an excessive period of time. Our national legislation has already appointed term limits on the office of the President in an effort to maintain political impartiality, thus it is only logical that such measures be applied to Congress as well. Some argue that congressional elections serve as inherent term limits for members of the House. This can be refuted by political campaign donors’ recognition of an incumbent candidate’s higher reelection rate and subsequent inclination to support such a campaign in an effort to yield more profit. This makes it nearly impossible for other candidates to have a chance at a fair election. In primary elections, both the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) very rarely introduce new candidates to run against incumbents. Thus, the current office-holder often becomes the sole possible nominee [2]. The approval rating of Congress ranks consistently below 20%, yet the congressional reelection rate remains over 95% because of the intrinsic advantages incumbents have over challengers, making it virtually impossible to vote them out of office. Term limits have the capacity to prevent individuals from becoming too powerful in Congress and ultimately better reflect the will of the American people. This also plays into a citizen’s constitutional right to vote by giving voters more choices at the ballot box and effectively eliminating the electoral monopoly generated by incumbent advantages. Allowing new individuals to run for office will give voters more federal autonomy and opportunities to create a personal choice.

Term limits are supported by a large majority of American demographic groups: an overwhelming 82% of Americans support a “Term Limits Amendment” for Congress, even crossing major party lines at 89% Republican, 83% Independent, and 76% Democratic, making the issue nonpartisan in itself [4]. The longstanding legislative resistance to congressional term limits stands in sharp contrast with private citizens’ strong support for them. The only serious primary opponents of term limits are incumbent politicians and the special interest groups that support them, particularly labor union groups. The extreme influence of lobbyists such as super Political Action Committees (PACs) and special interests serves as a threat to our democracy because these groups have held the financial power to sway elections and overpower the voices of others through absolutely exorbitant campaign donations. ​​According to “Open Secrets”, 97% of corporate PAC money goes to the incumbent candidates because they are often most established and easily-influenced – l obbyists and special interest groups already have them in their back pocket [5]. Term limits would effectively break the chokehold these groups have on the members of Congress, reducing the amount of money spent on incumbent candidates and thus making our elections more democratic and just. They would aid in reducing political corruption by severing politicians’ ties with lobbyists and bureaucrats, making ex-lawmakers overall less valuable. In doing so, public service is safeguarded from those who seek to exploit it for personal benefit.

 Time and time, year after year, we are represented by the same people. In 2020, both the House and Senate elections, 93% of incumbent candidates nationwide won their respective races. Such candidates have the name recognition, money, and power necessary to easily win these elections, however, they do little for their constituents and advance their own interests by gaining committee chairmanships and seniority. Bills and other legislatures are most often stalled in congressional election years when politicians are primarily focused on reelection rather than their duty to serve districts and address significant community matters. As it turns out, when members of Congress spend every waking moment of their given term consumed by the prospects of their own reelection, the concerns of the American people fall by the wayside. “As a result, all we are left with is unsolved problems and a $27 trillion national debt” [3]. When not fully invested in the matters of their own country, Congress members are forced to vote along party lines to ensure they are re-elected by their party. The introduction of term limits would create more acts of political courage. Term limits will allow the most capable lawmakers to have these positions while encouraging other members to do the same, creating a sense of ability over seniority. Term limits provide representatives who are closer to their constituents and who know they have a limited time in office to do the work they were sent there to do. They remain cognizant of the return they will make back home, where they too must live under the laws they have enacted.

Congressional incumbency is “ a paradigm of careerism, combining power, stature and influence with lavish benefits : a high salary; unparalleled business connections; limited working days; spectacular working conditions; periodic taxpayer-funded fact-finding trips; a sizable staff (that could include family and friends); exceptional medical, dental and retirement benefits; weakened insider trading rules; taxpayer funded legal expenses; the ability to moonlight at other jobs; free flights back and forth to the lawmaker’s home state; a family death gratuity; and free parking” [2]. Considering this it is truly no wonder that these guys make every effort to maintain their jobs for as long as humanly possible. Innovative public policy, which includes the addition of term limits, is the only way to address the most pressing of issues currently affecting our nation. How will we address problems such as foreign debt, climate change, immigration, etc. if the congressmen who have been unable to pass successful resolutions continue to remain in power? The solution lies in the succeeding and thus they must be rewarded an equal opportunity.

• Greenberg, Dan. “Term Limits: The Only Way to Clean up Congress.” The Heritage Foundation , Political Process, 1994, https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/term-limits-the-only-way-clean-congress
• Fulcrum, William NatbonyThe. “Ted Cruz Is Right! Congress Needs Term Limits.” Shelby News , 17 Aug. 2021, https://www.shelbynews.com/opinion/ted-cruz-is-right-congress-needs-term-limits/article_0bfe80b1-b6d9-5894-a39f-7e18376b8274.html
• “OpEd: We Need Congressional Term Limits.” Representative Jake LaTurner , 20 July 2021, https://laturner.house.gov/media/editorial/oped-we-need-congressional-term-limits
• “Suggestions on the Benefits of Term Limits.” U.S. Term Limits , 5 Aug. 2021, https://www.termlimits.com/suggestions/
• Markman, Allison. “Congress Needs Term Limits.” The Iris , 7 Sep. 2021, https://www.theirisnyc.com/post/congress-needs-term-limits

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Term limits for Congress are wildly popular. But most experts say they'd be a bad idea

Ashley Lopez

Congressional term limits are really popular with voters. With experts, not so much. Catie Dull/NPR hide caption

Congressional term limits are really popular with voters. With experts, not so much.

Frustration with America's political system has led to some renewed interest in setting term limits for lawmakers, though it's an idea broadly opposed by experts.

Voters have long been supportive of hard caps on how long someone can be in office, but recent infighting among Republicans over who should be speaker of the U.S. House and health issues among aging members of Congress have reignited calls for federal term limits. ( Ethics scandals at the U.S. Supreme Court have led to separate calls for judicial term limits.)

A Pew Research Center survey this summer found a whopping 87% of Americans say they support congressional term limits.

And it's one of those rare issues that appeals to people from across the political spectrum, with Democratic and Republican respondents in the Pew poll backing the policy in equal measure.

This story is part of a series of reports on alternatives to how Americans vote and elect their political leaders. Click here for more NPR voting stories .

Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs program at the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, says that's not surprising.

"There's a lot of dysfunction in our politics, particularly within Congress," he says. "Congress is one of the most unpopular institutions we have. And so when we have something unpopular, it makes a lot of sense to refresh the people who serve in that institution."

The idea has over the years been proposed by Democratic and Republican candidates alike, including then- President Donald Trump . And the appeal for term limits has only grown recently, says Nick Tomboulides, executive director of an advocacy group called U.S. Term Limits.

"When you're talking about the average American and why 87% of them support term limits, it's the storytelling," he says. "It's these high-profile examples that you see of people who have either lost control, they have cognitive decline ... [and] they're making the most important decisions in our country."

The incumbency advantage

Tomboulides also points to stories of lawmakers staying in office despite scandals and ethics violations.

And he blames all of this on the power of incumbency.

"Ninety-seven percent of incumbents get reelected ," he says. "Last election cycle, 100% of Senate incumbents on the ballot got reelected. Not a single sitting U.S. senator was defeated last cycle. And so from a democracy standpoint, from an election standpoint, our elections are not very democratic."

While the incumbency advantage is perhaps the most popular argument in support of term limits, academics who study this issue say it isn't as cut and dry as many people think it is.

Burgat says there are multiple factors that make it easier for incumbents to win elections, including redistricting. Most members of Congress are in uncompetitive seats drawn to particularly favor their party.

"Over 90% of our elections are uncompetitive, meaning we know essentially what party is going to win those elections, no matter what candidates are running," he says. "And so the faster you turn those politicians over, the more often you're going to have to replace them."

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What research has found.

Burgat says term limits don't solve the core problems in American politics that make people dislike Congress — things like gerrymandering, political polarization and the influence of special interests, as well as money in politics.

In fact, academics have broadly found that the effects of term limits are often either mixed or fall short of what proponents claim.

For example, supporters have argued term limits reduce polarization because lawmakers will be forced to be beholden to their constituents over their political parties. However, researchers found that term limits actually increased polarization in some cases.

Burgat says there is also evidence of some unintended consequences in the 16 states that have term limits for their state legislators.

Institutional knowledge

Susan Valdes is a Democratic state lawmaker in Florida, which is one of those 16 states.

"I've seen how the term limits have affected the policies at a state level and how much longer it takes to get good policies done," she says.

As a member of the Florida House, Valdes only gets a maximum of four two-year terms in office. She says she thinks of every term like one school year.

'"I'm going into my next election [thinking it] will be for my senior year," Valdes says. "And these six years in the Florida House have gone by so fast that really and truly the first two sessions, you're really just getting to know the ropes, understand how the lay of the land works, if you will, in that arena."

Florida state Reps. Susan Valdes, left, and Randy Fine high-five after debating a bill during a legislative session on March 8, 2022, in Tallahassee, Fla. Wilfredo Lee/AP hide caption

She says this is the case for pretty much everyone. Valdes says there's not a way for someone to train to become a legislator before getting into office.

Burgat says term limits often force people out of the job when they just start becoming effective and knowledgeable.

"And so when you term-limit someone," he says, "you are effectively cutting out their incentive to invest in learning how to do the job, to delve into policy issues at the depth that they need to and to really dive into how the procedures work, which just takes years. Because, again, there's no training ground for this. There's no training program."

But Tomboulides says he doesn't think lawmakers are spending their time gaining institutional knowledge, even when they have an unlimited amount of time in office. He says there is evidence that members of Congress spend most of their time raising money for their reelection.

"They're not studying the issues," Tomboulides says. "They're not reading these thousand-page bills because they're so focused on getting reelected. They're so focused on keeping the job rather than actually doing the job."

He says if politicians knew they had a limited time in office they would spend more time working for their constituents, instead of focusing on their next election.

But Valdes says she doesn't think term limits have created better legislators in her state.

"What I find is that we wind up trying to create legislation like we check our spaghetti," she says. "Let's see if it sticks to the wall and dinner's ready."

And she says what usually happens is that lawmakers have to go back during the next session and fix the unintended issues created by new policies.

"But in the meantime, what has happened is that people have been affected by those unintended consequences," Valdes says. "And that's where for me, the fairness, the equity, the righteousness of our policies and the intent of the laws that we pass sometimes get misguided."

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Power of special interests.

Some academics have found evidence that term limits give special interests more influence , because lobbyists and legislative staff have the bulk of the institutional knowledge in state legislatures.

Burgat says he also thinks term limits don't force lawmakers to be more beholden to their voters.

"In reality, studies have shown that term-limited lawmakers behave differently, that when you sever that electoral connection, when they're no longer dependent on voters to remain in office, then they start looking out for No. 1," he says. "They start looking out for themselves in a lot of different ways."

And that includes cozying up to lobbyists to line up their next job. Burgat says a lot of lawmakers don't want to forfeit all the relationships, institutional knowledge and policy expertise they gained in office.

But Tomboulides says he is not convinced that term limits equate to a big win for lobbyists and special interests. He says that's because, in his experience, lobbyists are some of the biggest opponents to his group's efforts.

"I've never had a lobbyist knock on my door and say, 'Hey, I really want to help you guys get term limits,' " he says. "It never happens. But I always have lobbyists opposing me."

Tomboulides says the fact that there is still debate about whether Congress should have term limits just shows the outsized influence that politicians have.

"Because we don't debate other 87% issues," he says. "We don't debate whether, like, my town should have a park or whether we should have, like, regular trash pickup — other 87, 90% issues. We just say this is what the American people want, this is what we're going to do. But term limits are imposed so strongly by the permanent political class in Washington."

And in the end, it is largely up to members of Congress to impose these limits on themselves.

A 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling went further to say that even if members of Congress managed to impose term limits on themselves, it could be ruled unconstitutional . That means congressional term limits might have to pass through a constitutional amendment, which is an exceedingly more difficult hurdle to clear.

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Guest Essay

Why the Supreme Court Needs (Short) Term Limits

By Rosalind Dixon

Dr. Dixon is a law professor and testified before the Supreme Court Commission in July 2021.

The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court recently issued its final report , considering a range of procedural changes to how the court operates — most notably, the introduction of term limits for the justices. It pointed to 18-year terms as the leading model for such change. Ideally, it suggested, the states would ratify a constitutional amendment, but some of the commissioners believed this could also be attempted through an act of Congress.

In writings after the report, other members of the commission suggested that term limits do not go far enough to curb an institution they view as hyperpartisan and as having lost public trust. (The court’s approval rating has plummeted , according to Gallup, to its lowest point since 2000, when the poll began.) They said that what was needed was an increase in the size of the court — to rebalance it in a more bipartisan direction.

More is needed to address the court’s current composition and approach — not by expanding the size of the court but through even more powerful, that is, shorter, term limits.

Eighteen years is too long to address the crisis in Supreme Court functioning and legitimacy. We need term limits that start to bite much sooner — after 12 years.

Judicial term limits are a tool widely employed by constitutional designers around the world. Some countries follow the British model of judicial age limits. Others follow the German model of fixed judicial terms, but almost all — other than the United States — reject the idea of lifetime judicial tenure. And they do so by imposing term limits shorter than 18 years.

Perhaps most important, countries with strict judicial term limits include some of the most powerful and respected constitutional courts. In Germany, justices of the Federal Constitutional Court are appointed for a single, nonrenewable 12-year term. It is the same in South Africa. And in Colombia and Taiwan, constitutional justices are appointed for an eight-year term.

Like term limits for the presidency, judicial term limits have several salutary benefits. They encourage regular turnover on a court and the renewal of democratic consent and input into the process of judicial review.

They also discourage the appointment of young, hyperideological judges who are seen as having the capacity to stay on the court for the long run and shift it in a particular predetermined ideological direction.

The Supreme Court does a lot more than call balls and strikes. It decides a range of complex legal and political questions, where legal and political philosophy inevitably play a role.

But for a court to earn and retain the public’s trust, those decisions must reflect a judge’s considered individual moral and political judgments, not any fixed ideological position or platform. Justices must also engage in true collective deliberation, not factional conferencing based on ideological positions.

The Supreme Court still does this in a wide range of nonconstitutional cases and cases that involve complex federal statutes like the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. But it rarely engages in that kind of thoughtful, collective deliberation in cases that involve constitutional rights and freedoms. What is good enough for employment benefits should be good enough for constitutional rights.

Expanding the court (“court packing”) might be justified if things were to get worse. For now, it risks setting off a dynamic with dangers for democracy. It could result in a cycle of escalation: As soon as Republicans regain control of Washington, they would seek to expand the size of the court as well. This would create a court that is too large, is forced to sit in panels rather than en banc, or as a whole, and produces uneven and unpredictable results. This is basically the experience of the Supreme Court of India, which has about 30 justices.

And it would mean that would-be authoritarians around the world would feel licensed to do the same. They would be encouraged to engage in what David Landau of Florida State University College of Law and I have called a form of “abusive” borrowing — the adoption of court packing as a strategy to advance anti-democratic rather than democratic aims.

No reform is without risks. Judges with fixed terms might also start considering postjudicial opportunities in their judgments. This is especially true for lower court judges, which explains why current reform efforts are focused solely on the Supreme Court. But this seems like a minor risk for the Supreme Court itself: Most justices are likely to prefer international arbitration or law teaching to ambassadorships. And as the commission itself noted, at least if there was a constitutional amendment, there could be a bar on judges’ holding certain offices during a period after retirement.

Some might worry that the court could turn out to be too responsive to politics under a 12-year term. This was the main reason the commission itself preferred 18-year judicial terms. But the composition of such a court would remain constant only for a single presidential term. And the details would matter: All judges could be appointed during the final two years of a president’s term, when there is less likely to be unified government and when a president’s choices would affect only the next president. This could also be accompanied by changes to how the Senate vets and votes on nominees.

The biggest risk is that the reform will simply fail to get off the ground. Judicial term limits can be adopted by statute or constitutional amendment. If adopted by statute, it would come before the Supreme Court for review — and the court might well reject the argument that it is compatible with Article III, which entrenches guarantees of judicial independence.

That makes constitutional amendment the safest path for any reform effort — but it is also the most difficult path. Article V provides that any successful amendment requires a supermajority in Congress and among the states. And if an amendment were a serious possibility, one might put a range of reforms — broader changes to how justices are appointed, electoral districts are drawn and campaign finance is regulated — ahead of term-limit reform in the list of structural changes likely to improve American law and politics.

Reforming an institution like the Supreme Court is tricky: Too rapid and radical an approach risks undermining all the institutional respect and capital it has built over centuries. Too moderate a response risks leaving it to face a slow decline in institutional integrity and public respect.

But especially if they could be adopted by statute, 12-year staggered judicial term limits might just help thread that needle — and contribute to meaningful yet restrained change to an institution that is in urgent need of it.

Rosalind Dixon is a law professor and director of the Gilbert + Tobin Center of Public Law at U.N.S.W. Sydney. She is the author, with David Landau, of “ Abusive Constitutional Borrowing : Legal Globalization and the Subversion of Liberal Democracy.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the purpose of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court report. It was to consider reforms to the Supreme Court, not call for reforms to it.

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Five reasons to oppose congressional term limits

Subscribe to governance weekly, casey burgat cb casey burgat assistant professor and program director of the legislative affairs program - george washington university’s graduate school of political management @caseyburgat.

January 18, 2018

“Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.”  – Roger Sherman, open letter, 1788.

Congressional term limits have long been argued to be an easy mechanism for improving the effectiveness of Congress and government at large. More specifically, advocates suggest term limits would allow members to spend less time dialing for dollars and more time on policymaking, allow them to make unpopular but necessary decisions without fear of retaliation at the ballot box, and avoid the corruptive influence of special interests that many assume is an inevitable result of spending too much time in Washington, D.C.

Plus, proponents reason, new blood in Congress is a good thing. New members bring fresh ideas and aren’t beholden to the old ways of Washington that have left so many voters frustrated and Congress’ approval rating in shambles. At the very least, term limits would prevent members from being reelected despite serving long past their primes.

In a political environment where bipartisan agreement on any issue of any size is rarely enjoyed, this proposal is incredibly popular. Seventy-four percent of likely voters are in favor of congressional term limits. In fact, many members—the very people who would be affected should such a policy be put in place—have shown their desire to limit the number of terms they themselves are eligible to serve by introducing legislation in nearly every congressional session since 1943 that would add a term-limit amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even then-candidate Donald Trump argued term limits would effectively help him “drain the swamp” when elected, much to the delight of his anti-establishment base.

The implicit argument is that Washington, with its corrosive practices, corrupts even the most well-intentioned lawmakers. Because of this, the best—and maybe only—form of inoculation is to limit, constitutionally, the time elected officials can spend in power. At their core, limit advocates contend that elections can’t be trusted to produce incorruptible representatives.

Much of the term-limit reasoning makes sense. However, it ignores the very real downsides that would result. Despite widespread support, instituting term limits would have numerous negative consequences for Congress.

Limiting the number of terms members can serve would:

1. Take power away from voters: Perhaps the most obvious consequence of establishing congressional term limits is that it would severely curtail the choices of voters. A fundamental principle in our system of government is that voters get to choose their representatives. Voter choices are restricted when a candidate is barred from being on the ballot.

2. Severely decrease congressional capacity: Policymaking is a profession in and of itself. Our system tasks lawmakers with creating solutions to pressing societal problems, often with no simple answers and huge likelihoods for unintended consequences. Crafting legislative proposals is a learned skill; as in other professions, experience matters. In fact, as expert analysis has shown with the recently passed Senate tax bill, policy crafted by even the most experienced of lawmakers is likely to have ambiguous provisions and loopholes that undermine the intended effects of the legislation. The public is not best served if inexperienced members are making policy choices with widespread, lasting effects.

Being on the job allows members an opportunity to learn and navigate the labyrinth of rules, precedents and procedures unique to each chamber. Term limits would result in large swaths of lawmakers forfeiting their hard-earned experience while simultaneously requiring that freshman members make up for the training and legislative acumen that was just forced out of the door.

Plus, even with term limits, freshman members would still likely defer to more experienced lawmakers—even those with just one or two terms of service—who are further along the congressional learning curve or who have amassed some level of institutional clout. Much as we see today, this deference would effectively consolidate power in members that have experience in the art of making laws. In other words, a new, though less-experienced, Washington “establishment” would still wield a disproportionate degree of power over policymaking.

Even in instances where staffers, rather than members, lead the charge in crafting policies, it is often the member-to-member interactions that solidify a measure’s final details, build coaltions, and ultimately get legislation passed. Take, for example, the recent Sen. Graham-Sen. Durbin alliance that has recently proposed a bipartisan immigration compromise . Such a partnership is due in no small part to the pair’s long history—Graham and Durbin served two years together in the House and the Senate for 21 years and counting. Term limits would severely hamper the opportunity for these necessary relationships to develop. Strangers in a new environment are in a far worse position to readily trust and rely on their colleagues, particularly from across the aisle.

3. Limit incentives for gaining policy expertise: Members who know their time in Congress is limited will face less pressure to develop expertise on specific issues simply because, in most cases, the knowledge accrued won’t be nearly as valuable in a few short years.

We have seen a semblance of this effect after Republicans limited House committee chairs to six years at the helm. The incentives for chairs to dive deep into the policy details of their committee’s jurisdiction are now limited, given that chairs know they will soon be forced to give up the gavel. (In the 115 th Congress alone, an alarming seven House Chairs have announced their retirements from Congress.)

Thus, term limits would impose a tremendous brain drain on the institution. Fewer experienced policymakers in Congress results in increased influence of special interests that are ready and willing to fill the issue-specific information voids. Additionally, a decrease in the number of seasoned lawmakers would result in greater deference to the executive branch and its agencies that administer the laws on a daily basis, given their greater expertise and longer tenure.

4. Automatically kick out effective lawmakers: No matter how knowledgeable or effectual a member may be in the arduous tasks of writing and advancing legislation, term limits would ensure that his or her talents will run up against a strict time horizon. In what other profession do we force the best employees into retirement with no consideration as to their abilities or effectiveness on the job? Doesn’t it make more sense to capitalize on their skills, talents and experience, rather than forcing them to the sidelines where they will do their constituents, the public and the institution far less good? Kicking out popular and competent lawmakers simply because their time runs out ultimately results in a bad return on the investment of time spent learning and mastering the ins and outs of policymaking in Congress.

5. Do little to minimize corruptive behavior or slow the revolving door:

Because term limits have never existed on the federal level, political scientists have studied states’ and foreign governments’ experiences with term limits to project what effects the measure would have on Congress. These studies regularly find that many of the corruptive, ‘swampy,’ influences advocates contend would be curtailed by instituting term limits are, in fact, exacerbated by their implementation.

Take lobbyist influence, for example. Term limit advocates contend lawmakers unconcerned with reelection will rebuff special interest pressures in favor of crafting and voting for legislation solely on its merits. However, the term limit literature commonly finds that more novice legislators will look to fill their own informational and policy gaps by an increased reliance on special interests and lobbyists. Relatedly, lawmakers in states with term limits have been found—including from this 2006 50-state survey —to increase deference to agencies, bureaucrats, and executives within their respective states and countries simply because the longer serving officials have more experience with the matters.

Advocates also suggest that limiting the number of terms lawmakers can serve will ultimately result in fewer members looking to capitalize on their Hill relationships and policymaking experience by becoming lobbyists themselves. Establishing term limits, however, would likely worsen the revolving door problem between Congress and the private sector given that mandating member exits ensures a predictable and consistently high number of former members available to peddle their influence. The revolving door phenomenon is considered a normative problem without term limits and relatively few departing members per cycle. With term limits, the number of influential former members would drastically increase, giving more private sector landing spots to members whose time has run out. More lobbying firms would have members able to advance their special interests with former members making use of their relationships and deep understanding of the ways of the Hill.

On the surface, the case for term limits is strong given their potential to curtail the forces of corruption that so many assume dictate the ways of Washington. But, precisely because the creation of successful public policies by even the most experienced of officials is so difficult and uncertain, we should not mandate that our most effective and seasoned lawmakers be forced out of the institution. Instead, as constituents, we should rely on the most effective mechanism available to remove unresponsive, ineffectual members of Congress: elections.

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Term limits aren’t the answer

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

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There’s no denying that the current Congress has been one of the most chaotic in recent memory. The paralysis in 2023 and 2024 over the selection of the speaker of the House helped lead to one of Congress’ most unproductive years in history.

And although House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, survived an effort on May 8, 2024, by far-right members of his conference to oust him, the attempt is a signal of the dysfunction in Congress. It’s also a prime example of why so few Americans have a favorable view of the job Congress is doing.

For many Americans, the solution to this dysfunction is clear: Institute limits on the number of terms members of Congress can serve. If voters use term limits to “ throw the bums out ” and replace them with a new crop of elected leaders, the reasoning goes, the result will be a more effective and perhaps less polarized Congress.

According to recent surveys, 80% or more of the American people are in favor of congressional term limits . You’d be hard pressed to find another policy that more Americans from both sides of the aisle agree on.

Yet there’s a problem: Most political scientists agree that term limits are a bad idea. The evidence suggests that term limits create more problems than they solve and could even accelerate the polarization that’s been hobbling Congress for over a decade .

The value of long incumbencies

Advocates of term limits often point to a striking statistic to support the reform: the consistently high reelection rates of congressional incumbents. Current members of Congress enjoy a strong advantage from their status as an elected representative – that is, more name recognition and campaign resources than their challengers. Advocates for term limits say they are necessary to cut long-term incumbents’ service short in favor of new blood.

But term limits, often set at eight years in state legislatures, undervalue the benefits of representatives who have been serving in office for a long time. These members have had more time to gain knowledge and experience about Congress as an institution; develop policy expertise in issues important to their districts; and cultivate working relationships with fellow members that help them make policy more effectively.

Data from the Center for Effective Lawmaking , a research center with the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, which tracks members’ success rates for legislation they sponsor, strongly supports this perspective: The longer members serve, the more effective a lawmaker they are likely to become.

Fresh perspectives in Congress are important, which is why the U.S. has elections. But term limits would stifle members’ lawmaking careers just as they’re getting off the ground. Even worse, losing well-seasoned members with issue expertise would leave inexperienced lawmakers vulnerable to influence from lobbyists and special interest groups that would highlight their own expertise and seek to influence legislation in their favor.

This is precisely what has happened in state legislatures that instituted term limits around the turn of the century.

Term limits don’t solve extremism

Term limits are also unlikely to make Congress less ideologically extreme.

Judging from statements they’ve made, many of the more tenured members who are retiring at the end of the current Congress are the ones lamenting extremism and partisanship, often citing these trends as the reason they’re leaving.

Meanwhile, many of the most polarizing and best-known representatives in Congress – think Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican; Matt Gaetz of Florida, also a Republican; and Democrat Ilhan Omar from Minnesota – are newer members with less apparent interest in compromise and achievement of long-term policy goals. The data reflects this : The average long-serving member of Congress nearly always has lower ideological extremism scores than the average congressional newcomer, based on roll call votes on policy issues.

Vast majorities of Americans say they prefer a Congress that compromises to get things done. Term limits would almost certainly fail to achieve this.

Congressional ‘senioritis’

But this isn’t the only negative impact of term-limits reform.

Research by political scientist Gerald Wright suggests not only that term limits for state legislators were ineffective at reducing polarization, but that term-limited lawmakers – those legally prevented from running for reelection – tend to exert “decreased legislative effort” and missed roll call votes compared with their colleagues who are up for reelection.

In other words, members in their legally mandated final term in office enjoy a kind of “senioritis” – the apathy that can hit students in their last term of high school or college – in their legislatures because they don’t have to face the voters again at the ballot box.

Elections: The ultimate term limits

Most political scientists agree that high incumbent reelection rates are mainly the result of highly partisan districts and voters, not corrupt incumbents advantaged by years of service. The voters already have a say in primaries and general elections to vote out incumbents.

But they largely choose not to.

It is likely that very loose term limits – say, 20 years of service –could help prevent aging incumbents such as Mitch McConnell or the late Dianne Feinstein from serving well past their prime. But as a method for depolarizing Congress and making it effective again, the evidence is thin.

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Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics

10. how americans view proposals to change the political system, table of contents.

• The impact of partisan polarization
• Persistent concerns over money in politics
• Views of the parties and possible changes to the two-party system
• Other important findings
• Explore chapters of this report
• In their own words: Americans on the political system’s biggest problems
• In their own words: Americans on the political system’s biggest strengths
• Are there clear solutions to the nation’s problems?
• Evaluations of the political system
• Trust in the federal government
• Feelings toward the federal government
• The relationship between the federal and state governments
• Americans’ ratings of their House member, governor and local officials
• Party favorability ratings
• Most characterize their party positively
• Quality of the parties’ ideas
• Influence in congressional decision-making
• Views on limiting the role of money in politics
• Views on what kinds of activities can change the country for the better
• How much can voting affect the future direction of the country?
• Views of members of Congress
• In their own words: Americans’ views of the major problems with today’s elected officials
• How much do elected officials care about people like me?
• What motivates people to run for office?
• Quality of recent political candidates
• In elections, is there usually at least one candidate who shares your views?
• What the public sees as most important in political candidates
• Impressions of the people who will be running for president in 2024
• Views about presidential campaigns
• How much of an impact does who is president have on your life?
• Whose priorities should the president focus on?
• How different are the Republican and Democratic parties?
• Views of how well the parties represent people’s interests
• What if there were more political parties?
• Would more parties make solving problems easier or harder?
• How likely is it that an independent candidate will become president?
• Americans who feel unrepresented by the parties have highly negative views of the political system
• Views of the Electoral College
• Should the size of the U.S. House of Representatives change?
• Senate seats and population size
• Younger adults more supportive of structural changes
• Politics in a single word or phrase: An outpouring of negative sentiments
• Negative emotions prevail when Americans think about politics
• Americans say the tone of political debate in the country has worsened
• Which political topics get too much – and too little – attention?
• Majority of Americans find it stressful to talk politics with people they disagree with
• Acknowledgments

Reflecting the public’s unhappiness with the U.S. political system , there is broad support for a number of significant structural changes to politics:

Term limits for members of Congress . An overwhelming majority of adults (87%) favor limiting the number of terms that members of Congress are allowed to serve. This includes a majority (56%) who strongly favor this proposal; just 12% are opposed.

Maximum age limits for elected officials in Washington, D.C., and Supreme Court justices. Nearly eight-in-ten adults (79%) favor maximum age limits for elected officials in Washington, while 74% favor a maximum age limit for Supreme Court justices.

Requiring voters to show government-issued identification. By more than three-to-one (76% to 22%), Americans support requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to vote. These views are little changed from 2021 .

A narrower majority (62%) favors automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote.

A proposal to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, by contrast, draws slightly more opposition (51%) than support (46%).

Overwhelming majorities in both parties favor term limits for members of Congress

Term limits for members of Congress are widely popular with both Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (90%) and Democrats and Democratic leaners (86%).

Establishing age limits for elected officials in Washington, D.C., also draws broad bipartisan support.

There are wider partisan differences in views of putting a maximum age limit for Supreme Court justices. Still, 82% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans support age limits for the justices.

As in past surveys, Republicans and Democrats hold different views of proposals to change how voting works in this country.

Nearly all Republicans support requiring all voters to show government-issued identification (93% favor this), compared with a narrower majority (61%) of Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats (80%) are much more likely than Republicans (45%) to favor automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote.

Increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court is supported by about two-thirds of Democrats (66% favor). But only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) favor expanding the size of the court, while more than twice as many (72%) are opposed.

Young adults more likely than older people to support adding Supreme Court justices

There are fairly modest age differences in views of most of these proposals. However, adults under age 50 are more likely than those 50 and older to favor automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote (66% vs. 57%).

And a majority of adults under 30 (58%) favor increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Support for this proposal decreases with age: About a third (35%) of those 65 and older favor this. 

These age differences are more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats. About four-in-ten Republicans ages 18 to 29 (44%) favor expanding the court, but that drops steadily with age; just 13% of Republicans 65 and older support this. In contrast, Democrats in all age groups are nearly equally likely to favor increasing the number of justices on the court.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) favor changing the current system for presidential elections so that the candidate who receives the most votes wins, while a third prefer to keep the current system so that the candidate who wins the Electoral College vote wins the election.

Support for changing the current system has ticked up slightly since last summer .

Democrats remain much more likely to favor a popular vote system for presidential elections than Republicans: 82% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say they would prefer to change the current system, compared with 47% of Republicans and Republican leaners.

Among all political independents and others who don’t identify with a party, about two-thirds (66%) favor changing the current system so the candidate who receives the most votes wins, while 31% prefer to keep the current Electoral College system. However, Democratic-leaning independents are much more supportive of changing the Electoral College system than Republican-leaning independents.

About three-in-ten adults (29%) say the size of the House of Representatives should be increased beyond its current 435 members, while a narrow majority (53%) say the size of the House should stay the same. Another 15% prefer to decrease the size of the House.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that the number of members in the House should increase, though larger shares in both parties favor keeping the House at its current size.

About a third of Democrats and Democratic leaners (35%) favor increasing the size of the House, compared with 23% of Republicans and Republican leaners.

Republican-leaning independents (30%) are more likely than GOP partisans to favor increasing the size of the House (19%). The views of Democratic-leaning independents on this question are nearly identical to those of Democratic identifiers.

When it comes to the Senate, 66% of adults say that the method of determining representation in the upper chamber should not be changed, and all states should continue to have two senators regardless of population size. Roughly half as many (32%) say that the Constitution should be amended so that states with larger populations have more senators than smaller states.

Eight-in-ten Republicans favor maintaining the Senate’s present structure.

Among Democrats, a narrower majority (54%) favor the current allocation, while 45% say the Constitution should be amended.

The views of independents are similar to the overall public’s views, with 65% preferring to keep the current system as-is. However, Democratic-leaning independents’ views are nearly identical to Democratic partisans’ views, while Republican-leaning independents’ views are nearly identical to Republicans’ views.

Younger adults are more likely than older adults to favor a popular vote for president, an expansion of the House of Representatives and a change to the way representation in the Senate is apportioned.

While majorities of adults across age groups support changing the presidential election system so the candidate who wins the popular vote wins the election, this view is more common among those under 50 (69%) than among those ages 50 and older (61%).

Age differences are larger when it comes to changes to the structure of Congress, with support for changes decreasing with age. Adults under 30 are much more likely than those 65 and older to say both that the number of House members should be increased (44% vs. 17%) and that the Constitution should be amended so that more populous states have more senators than smaller states (45% vs. 18%).

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Term limits in the united states.

• 1 Federal term limits
• 2.1 State legislatures with term limits
• 2.2 Overturned state legislative term limits
• 3 Municipal term limits
• 5 External links

There are a number of term limits to offices in the United States, which restrict the number of terms an individual can hold a certain office.

Federal term limits

The Amendment XXII, United States Constitution says that no person can be elected President of the United States more than twice. Term limits are a particularly important issue in the United States.

President George Washington originally started the tradition of informal Presidential term limits by refusing to run for a third term. The short-lived Confederate States of America adopted a six-year term for their President and Vice-President, and barred the President from seeking re-election. This innovation was endorsed by many American politicians after the war, most notably by Rutherford B. Hayes in his inaugural address. Hayes' proposal did not come to fruition, but the government of Mexico adopted the Confederate term and limit for its federal President. Franklin Roosevelt was the first and only President to successfully break Washington's tradition, and he died in office while serving his fourth term.

Congressional term limits were featured prominently in the Republican Party's Contract with America in the United States House 1994 election campaign and may well have contributed to the Republicans gaining control of the United States House of Representatives from the Democratic Party for the first time since the United States 1952 elections. The Republican leadership brought to the floor of the House a constitutional amendment that would limit House members to six two-year terms and members of the Senate to two six-year terms. However, this amendment did not gain the approval of U.S. Term Limits , the largest private organization pushing for Congressional term limits. (U.S. Term Limits wanted House members to be limited to three two-year terms.) With the Republicans holding 230 seats in the House, the amendment did receive a simple majority in the House. However, a two-thirds majority (290 votes) is required to pass a constitutional amendment, and thus the bill failed. The concept subsequently lost momentum by the mid 1990s.

In May 1995, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton , that states cannot impose term limits upon their U.S. Representatives or U.S. Senators.

Term limits at the federal level are restricted to the executive branch and some agencies. The U.S. Congress, however, remains without electoral limits.

State term limits

Term limits for state governors or others within the state executive branch and other high constitutional offices have existed since the beginning of the United States. One of the first such limits of its kind, the Delaware Constitution of 1776, limited the Governor of Delaware to a single three-year term; the governor of Delaware can serve two 4-year terms. As of present, there are 36 states have adopted term limits of various types for their governors. One variation allowed a governor to be re-elected, but only to non-consecutive terms. (To circumvent this provision, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama , announced in 1966 that voters should elect his wife, Lurleen Wallace, their next governor. It was clear during the campaign that Mrs. Wallace would be a governor in name only, and thus she was elected the first female governor of Alabama.)

Beginning in the 1990s, term limit laws were imposed on twenty state legislatures through either successful ballot measures , referenda, legislative acts, or state constitutional changes. The Maine legislature was the first state to enact legislative term limits in 1993.

Since 1997, however, six state legislatures have either overturned their own limits or state supreme courts have ruled such limits unconstitutional. In 2002 the Idaho Legislature became the first legislature of its kind to repeal its own term limits, enacted by a public vote in 1994, ostensibly because it applied to local officials along with the legislature.

State legislatures with term limits

Overturned state legislative term limits.

The following six legislatures have had their term limits nullified:

• Idaho Legislature: the Legislature repealed its own term limits in 2002.
• Massachusetts General Court : the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned term limits in 1997.
• Oregon Legislative Assembly: the Oregon Supreme Court ruled term limits unconstitutional in 2002.
• Utah State Legislature: the Legislature repealed its own term limits in 2003.
• Washington State Legislature: the Washington Supreme Court voided term limits in 1998.
• Wyoming Legislature: the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled term limits unconstitutional in 2004.

Municipal term limits

As of 2023, nine of the ten largest cities in the United States impose term limits on elected municipal officials, according to U.S. Term Limits , which, according to its website, "advocates for term limits at all levels of government." [1] [2]

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• List of term limits ballot measures
• U.S. Term Limits
• Eric O'Keefe

External links

• National Conference of State Legislatures term limits overview
• U.S. Term limits page on state legislative term limits
• ↑ 1.0 1.1 U.S. Term Limits , "Nine Of The Ten Largest U.S. Cities Have Term Limits," accessed March 13, 2023
• ↑ U.S. Term Limits , "About U.S. Term Limits," accessed March 13, 2023
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Why No Term Limits for Congress? The Constitution

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Since the early 1990s, the long-running demand to impose term limits on the Senators and Representatives elected to the U.S. Congress has intensified. Considering that since 1951 the President of the United States has been limited to two terms, term limits for members of Congress seem reasonable. There's just one thing in the way: the U.S. Constitution .

Historical Precedence for Term Limits 

Even before the Revolutionary War, several American colonies applied term limits. For example, under Connecticut’s “Fundamental Orders of 1639,” the colony’s governor was prohibited from serving consecutive terms of only one year, and stating that “no person be chosen Governor above once in two years.” After independence, Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 limited members of the state’s General Assembly from serving more than “four years in seven.

At the federal level, the  Articles of Confederation , adopted in 1781, set term limits for delegates to the Continental Congress – the equivalent of the modern Congress – mandating that “no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years.”

There Have Been Congressional Term Limits

Senators  and  Representatives  from 23 states faced term limits from 1990 to 1995, when the  U.S. Supreme Court  declared the practice unconstitutional with its decision in the case of  U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton .

In a 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court ruled that the states could not impose congressional term limits because the Constitution simply did not grant them the power to do so.

In his majority opinion, Justice Stevens noted that allowing the states to impose term limits would result in "a patchwork of state qualifications" for members of the U.S. Congress, a situation he suggested would be inconsistent with "the uniformity and national character that the framers sought to ensure." In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that state-specific term limits would jeopardize the "relationship between the people of the Nation and their National Government."

Term Limits and the Constitution

The Founding Fathers considered—and rejected—the idea of term limits for Congress. A majority of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 felt that the longer they served, the more experienced, knowledgeable, and thus, effective members of Congress would become. As Father of the Constitution James Madison explained in Federalist Papers No. 53:

"[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them," wrote Madison.

Delegates who sided with Madison in opposing term limits argued that regular elections by the people could be a better check on corruption than constitutional term limits and that such restrictions would create their problems. Ultimately, the anti-term limits forces won out and the Constitution was ratified without them.

So now the only remaining way to impose term limits on Congress is to undertake the long and uncertain task of amending the Constitution .

This can be done in one of two ways. First, Congress can propose a term limits amendment with a two-thirds “ supermajority ” vote. In January 2021, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, along with Marco Rubio of Florida and other Republican colleagues, introduced a bill ( S.J.Res.3 ) calling for a constitutional amendment that would limit senators to two six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms. 

In introducing the bill, Senator Cruz argued, “Though our Founding Fathers declined to include term limits in the Constitution, they feared the creation of a permanent political class that existed parallel to, rather than enmeshed within, American society.

Should Congress pass the bill, which as history has proven, is highly doubtful, the amendment would be sent to the states for ratification. 

If Congress refuses to pass a term limits amendment, the states could do it. Under Article V of the Constitution, if two-thirds (currently 34) of the state legislatures vote to demand it, Congress is required to convene a full constitutional convention to consider one or more amendments. 

The Aging Senators Argument

Another common argument in favor of congressional term limits is the advancing age of lawmakers who, for various reasons, continually win reelection. 

According to the Congressional Research Service, 23 members of the Senate are in their 70s at the beginning of 2022, while the average age of senators was 64.3 years—the oldest in history. Thus the debate goes on: Experience vs. new ideas? Career politicians vs. short-timers? Old vs. young? Baby Boomers vs. Gen X, Y (millennials), or Z?

Senators—more so than representatives—often remain in office for decades because their constituents are reluctant to give up the advantages of incumbency: Seniority, committee chairmanships, and all the money poured into their states. For example, West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd , who was in his ninth term when he died at age 92, funneled an estimated $10 billion to his state during his 51 years in the Senate, according to the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History.

In 2003, South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond retired at age 100 after serving 48 years in the Senate. The not-very-well-hidden secret was that during his last term, which ended six months before his death, his staff did virtually everything for him but push the vote button.  

While the Founding Fathers created minimum age requirements for serving in the House, Senate, or as president, they did not address a maximum age. So the question remains: How long should members of Congress be allowed to work? In 1986, Congress passed a law ending mandatory retirement by age 65 for most professions except the military, law enforcement, commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, and, in a few states, judges.

Notably, however, six of the most brilliant political figures in the first 50 years of the United States; James Madison, Daniel Webster , Henry Clay , John Quincy Adams , John C. Calhoun , and Stephen A. Douglas served a combined 140 years in Congress. Many of America's greatest legislative achievements—such as Social Security, Medicare, and Civil Rights—came from members of Congress who were in their later years of seniority. 

Why Presidential Term Limits?

At the Constitutional Convention, some delegates had fears of creating a president was too much like a king. However, they came close to doing by adopting provisions like the presidential pardon , a power similar to the British King’s “royal prerogative of mercy.” Some delegates even favored making the presidency a lifetime appointment. Though he was quickly shouted down, John Adams proposed that the president should be addressed as “His Elective Majesty.”

Instead, the delegated agreed on the complicated and often controversial electoral college system , which would still ensure, as the framers desired, that presidential elections were not left solely in the hands of ordinarily uninformed voters. Within this system, they shortened a president’s appointment from life to four years. But because most of the delegates opposed setting a limit on how many four-year terms a president could serve, they did not address it in the Constitution.

Knowing he could have probably been reelected for life, President George Washington originally started the tradition of informal Presidential term limits by refusing to run for a third term. Created after the secession of southern states from the Union in 1861, the short-lived Confederate States of America adopted a six-year term for their president and vice president and barred the president from seeking re-election. After the Civil War , many American politicians embraced the idea of presidential term limits. 

Official term limits on the chief executive were introduced after the four consecutive elections of President Franklin Roosevelt .

While earlier presidents had served no more than the two-term precedent set by George Washington, Roosevelt remained in office for nearly 13 years, prompting fears of a monarchial presidency. So, in 1951, the United States ratified the 22nd Amendment , which strictly limits the president to serving no more than two terms.

The amendment had been one of 273 recommendations to Congress by the Hoover Commission, created by Pres. Harry S. Truman , to reorganize and reform the federal government. It was formally proposed by the U.S. Congress on March 24, 1947, and was ratified on Feb. 27, 1951.  

An Organized Movement for Term Limits

The ultimate goal of the USTL is to get the 34 states required by Article V of the Constitution to demand a convention to consider amending the Constitution to require term limits for Congress. Recently, USTL reported that 17 of the needed 34 states had passed resolutions calling for an Article V constitutional convention. If adopted by a constitutional convention, the term limits amendment would have to be ratified by 38 states.

The Pros and Cons of Congressional Term Limits

Even political scientists remain divided on the question of term limits for Congress. Some argue that the legislative process would benefit from “fresh blood” and ideas, while others view the wisdom gained from long experience as essential to the continuity of government.

The Pros of Term Limits

• Limits Corruption: The power and influence gained by being a member of Congress for a long period of time tempt lawmakers to base their votes and policies on their own self-interest, instead of those of the people. Term limits would help prevent corruption and reduce the influence of special interests.
• Congress – It’s Not a Job: Being a member of Congress should not become the office-holders career. People who choose to serve in Congress should do so for noble reasons and a true desire to serve the people, not just to have a perpetual well-paying job.
• Bring in Some Fresh Ideas: Any organization – even Congress – thrives when fresh new ideas are offered and encouraged. The same people holding the same seat for years leads to stagnation. Basically, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. New people are more likely to think outside the box.
• Reduce Fundraising Pressure: Both lawmakers and voters dislike the role money plays in the democratic system. Constantly facing reelection, members of Congress feel pressured to devote more time to raising campaign funds than to serving the people. While imposing term limits might not have much of an effect on the overall amount of money in politics, it would at least limit the amount of time elected officials will have to donate to fundraising.

The Cons of Term Limits

• It’s Undemocratic:  Term limits would actually limit the right of the people to choose their elected representatives. As evidenced by the number of incumbent lawmakers reelected in every midterm election , many Americans truly like their representative and want them to serve for as long as possible. The mere fact that a person has already served should not deny the voters a chance to return them to office.
• Experience is Valuable: The longer you do a job, the better you get at it. Lawmakers who have earned the trust of the people and proven themselves to be honest and effective leaders should not have their service cut short by term limits. New members of Congress face a steep learning curve. Term limits would reduce the chances of new members growing into the job and becoming better at it.
• Throwing Out the Baby With the Bathwater: Yes, term limits would help eliminate some of the corrupt, power-hungry and incompetent lawmakers, but it would also get rid of all the honest and effective ones.
• Getting to Know Each Other: One of the keys to being a successful legislator is working well with fellow members. Trusts and friendships among members across party lines are essential to progress on controversial legislation. Such politically bipartisan friendships take time to develop. Term limits would reduce the chances for legislators to get to know each other and use those relationships to the advantage of both parties and, of course, the people.
• Won’t Really Limit Corruption: From studying the experiences of state legislatures, political scientists suggest that instead of “draining the swamp,” congressional term limits could actually make corruption in the U.S. Congress worse. Term limit advocates contend that lawmakers who do not have to worry about being reelected will not be tempted to “cave in” to pressure from special interest groups and their lobbyists, and will instead base their votes solely on the merits of the bills before them. However, history has shown that inexperienced, term-limited state legislators are more likely to turn to special interests and lobbyists for information and “direction” or legislation and policy issues. In addition, with term limits, the number of influential former members of Congress would increase dramatically. Many of those former members would—as they do now—go to work for private sector lobbying firms where their deep knowledge of the political process helping to advance special interest causes.

Established in the early 1990s, the Washington, D.C. based U.S. Term Limits (USTL) organization has advocated for term limits at all levels of government. In 2016, USTL launched its Term Limits Convention, a project to amend the Constitution to require congressional term limits. Under the Term Limits Convention program, the state legislatures are encouraged to enact term limits for the members of Congress elected to represent their states.

• The Debate Over Term Limits for Congress
• Proposed Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• How to Amend the Constitution
• Qualifications to be a US Representative
• The 22nd Amendment Sets Presidential Term Limits
• Why the Congressional Reform Act Will Never Pass
• Supermajority Vote in US Congress
• Overview of the 27th Amendment
• How Many Years Can a President Serve in the White House?
• The U.S. Constitution
• The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution: Election of Senators
• Can You Recall a Member of Congress?
• Basic Structure of the US Government
• How Vacancies in the US Congress are Filled
• Requirements to be a US Senator
• The Original Bill of Rights Had 12 Amendments

University of Cincinnati Law Review Blog

Student and Practitioner Legal Scholarship Online

Should Supreme Court Justices Have Term Limits?

Photo by Jessie Collins on Unsplash

Sarah Simon, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review

I. Introduction

Justices on the Supreme Court are appointed for life. Most retire, but four justices have died during their term: Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [1] Justice Ginsburg’s sudden death after serving 27 years on the Supreme Court has reignited a popular debate: Should the Supreme Court have term limits? [2]  

House Democrats proposed The Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act (“Act”), a bill that would create term limits of 18 years for justices. [3] Justices would not have to fully retire after 18 years; they could rotate to lower federal courts after their 18 years on the Supreme Court. [4] The Act would only allow presidents to pick two justices during a four-year term to limit political clashes over replacements. [5]

Approximately 53 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court should have term limits and a mere 28 percent believe justices should serve for life, according to a 2018 survey. [6] Although there is public support for term limits, enacting them is more complicated. Part II will discuss the constitutionality of term limits. Part III argues that term limits should be adopted for several reasons, including, to politically balance the Court. Part IV concludes by acknowledging the political control of the Senate could prevent the term limits bill from being passed.

II. Constitutionality of Term Limits

While the majority of Americans support term limits, another important question must be addressed: How should term limits be effectuated? Some legal scholars argue that term limits may only be imposed through an amendment to the Constitution. [7] This is because Article III Section 1 of the Constitution states, “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour . . . ” [8] The term “good behavior” has been interpreted by textualists to mean Supreme Court justices should serve life terms. [9] Under this view, amending the Constitution is the only way to make term limits constitutional.

However, the Constitution was ratified in 1787 when the average life expectancy for a white male in the US was about 38 years. [10] Today, US life expectancy is about 79 years (across demographics) and the average justice spends 28 years on the Court. [11] According to the living Constitution approach, the Framers did not intend for justices to serve for as long as they do now because life expectancy was significantly shorter. [12] Therefore, implementing term limits by statute would still be consistent with the Framer’s intent.

A third approach to interpreting the “good behavior” requirement in Article III Section 1 of the Constitution points out that it “does not expressly grant life tenure to Supreme Court justices.” [13] This means the requirement of having justices serve “during good behavior” could be met by a law allowing justices to continue their service on another federal court after they serve on the Supreme Court. [14] The proposed Act includes this option for justices after they spend 18 years on the Supreme Court, which makes the Act constitutional according to some legal scholars. [15] Therefore, the proposed Act is likely constitutional. But, why should term limits be implemented?

III. Discussion

First, the Act should be adopted to politically balance the Court by giving each president an equal amount of nominations. Thus far, presidential appointments have not been evenly distributed between Democrat and Republican presidents. Democrats have appointed only 4 of the past 18 justices. [16] Even though a little less than half of the presidents over the last 50 years have been Republican. [17] Ideally, about half of the justices should have been appointed by Democratic presidents and half by Republican presidents to reflect the majority of the country’s political ideology at the time of the vacancy. The Act would help solve this imbalance by limiting president appointments to two per term, giving future Democratic presidents more opportunities to appoint justices than they have had so far. This assures those newly appointed justices are reflective of the country’s political leaning, which is critical for a robust democracy.

Second, the Act would not harm the Court’s legitimacy. Legitimacy refers to the Court’s ability “to resolve disputes in ways people find acceptable even if they don’t like the decision.” [18] Term limit critics argue life terms insulate justices from political pressure, which protects the Court’s legitimacy. [19]  If the Court is not viewed as legitimate, the public is less likely to follow its opinions. [20] Under the Act, justices would be limited to 18 years on the Court, instead of life. 18 years is still a long time, equal to three Senate terms. Therefore, 18-year terms would protect justices from politics and the Court’s legitimacy would not be tarnished. 

Third, the Act would limit the increasing divisiveness of the Supreme Court confirmation process. Although few Democrats today would agree with Justice Scalia’s opinions, he was confirmed 98-0 in 1986. [21] No justice has been confirmed unanimously since. [22] Instead, justices are increasingly confirmed with narrow margins and the votes are often along party lines, with Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh confirmed 54-45 and 50-48, respectively. [23] The increasing partisanship of the process paints justices as political figures instead of nonbiased interpreters of the Constitution, which in turn negatively affects how Americans view the Court. The Act would balance the number of justices that each president can nominate, which would help the confirmation process become less partisan.

Fourth, the tense political climate along with approaching elections heightens the need for term limits. Currently, President Trump is attempting to get his third nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barret, confirmed to the Court. [24] Without term limits, Judge Barret could be on the Supreme Court for several decades as she is only 48. [25] This is arguably too much power for one president to harness. Also, President Trump lost the popular vote, so him getting his third appointment makes the Court seem less in tune with the public. [26] As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said when he refused to confirm Judge Merrick Garland in an election year, “the American people should have a say in the court’s direction.” [27] Overall, term limits should be implemented to assure presidential appointments are balanced to reflect the electorate.

IV. Conclusion

Currently, the House has a strong Democrat majority, but the Senate has a Republican majority. [28] If the bill is passed, President Trump’s nominee, Judge Barret, would not be confirmed as President Trump has already appointed the maximum of two Supreme Court justices, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. So, Justice Ginsberg’s vacancy would not be filled until next year, when either President Trump or a new president takes office. But the current political makeup of the Senate and the requirement that President Trump sign the bill make it unlikely that the bill will become law. However, if the Senate flips and a new president is elected, Democrats could try to pass term limits next year.

[1] Josh Blackman, Justices Who Died in Office , Volokh Conspiracy(Sept. 18, 2020) https://reason.com/2020/09/18/justices-who-died-in-ofice/ .

[2] Nina Totenberg, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion of Gender Equality, Dies At 87 , NPR (Sept. 18, 2020) https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87 .

[3] Andrew Chung, Democrats Prepare Bill Limiting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Terms to 18 Years , Reuters (Sept. 24, 2020) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-termlimits/democrats-prepare-bill-limiting-u-s-supreme-court-justice-terms-to-18-years-idUSKCN26F3L3?utm_source=reddit.com .

[6] Julia Manchester, Americans Tend to be in Favor of Term Limits for Most Institutions, says Pollster, The Hill (Sept. 27, 2018) https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/408781-americans-tend-to-be-in-favor-of-term-limits-for-most .

[7] Zack Stanton, ‘It’s a Crazy Way to Run a Country’: How to Reform the Supreme Court , Politico(Sept. 24, 2020) https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/24/supreme-court-reform-ideas-term-limits-rbg-age-packing-421203 .

[8] U.S. Const. art. III, § 1.

[9] Kalvis Golde, House Democrats to Introduce New Bill for Supreme Court Term Limits, SCOTUSblog (Sept. 24, 2020) https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/09/house-democrats-to-introduce-new-bill-for-supreme-court-term-limits/ .

[10] Frank Whelan , In the America of 1787, Big Families are the Norm and Life Expectancy is 38, The Morning Call (June 28, 1987) https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1987-06-28-2569915-story.html#:~:text=Life%20expectancy%20in%20the%20America,years%20for%20a%20white%20male .

[11] CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Mar. 17, 2017) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm ; Kalvis Golde, Experts Tout Proposals for Supreme Court Term Limits , SCOTUSblog(Aug. 4, 2020) https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/08/experts-tout-proposals-for-supreme-court-term-limits/ .

[13] Fix the Court, Term Limits, Fix the Court (2020) https://fixthecourt.com/fix/term-limits/ .

[15] Chung, supra note 3.

[16] Stanton, supra note 7.

[18] Id. (quoting Professor Daniel Epps).

[21] U.S. Senate, Supreme Court Nominations (1789-Present) https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nominations/SupremeCourtNominations1789present.htm .

[24] Rick Pearson & Jason Meisner, President Trump Officially Nominates Chicago Federal Judge and Ex-Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court, Setting Up a Bitter Confirmation Confrontation in Senate, Chicago Tribune (Sept. 26, 2020) https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-amy-coney-barrett-trump-supreme-court-nomination-ginsburg-20200925-sro7jixc55gk7e5idsqokxuxg4-story.html .

[25] If confirmed, Judge Barret would be the youngest member of the current Court; id.

[26] Stanton, supra note 7.

[27] Ron Elving, What Happened with Merrick Garland in 2016 and Why It Matters Now , NPR (June 29, 2018) https://www.npr.org/2018/06/29/624467256/what-happened-with-merrick-garland-in-2016-and-why-it-matters-now ; Judge Merrick Garland was former President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016.

Sarah Simon

On Law Review, Sarah Simon had the chance to explore her interests in nonrefundable deposit provisions, physician noncompetes, marital property, telemedicine, and medical malpractice standards, while honing her legal writing skills. Sarah hopes to become a transactional attorney and looks forward to perfecting her writing.

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THE LAW AND POLITICS OF PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMIT EVASION

Mila versteeg,* timothy horley,** anne meng,*** mauricio guim**** & marilyn guirguis*****.

Since the turn of the millennium, a remarkably large number of incumbent presidents have managed to stay past the end of their consti­tutionally mandated terms. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe represent a sizeable collection of presidents who were democratically elected but remained in power long past their original mandates. Such attempts to stay in office are not new, but in recent decades their nature has changed.

In this Essay, we present findings from an original and compre­hensive survey of all evasion attempts since the year 2000. Tracing the constitutional strategies of 234 incumbents in 106 countries, we docu­ment the range of constitutional strategies these incumbents have pur­sued, along with how they succeeded or failed. This exercise has revealed a number of insights. First, evasion attempts are very common. Globally, no fewer than one-third of the incumbents who reached the end of their prescribed term pursued some strategy to remain in office. If we exclude the world’s strongest democracies, we find that about half of the leaders that reached the end of their term attempted to overstay. Second, and perhaps most illuminating, none of these attempts involved ignoring the constitution outright. Instead, incumbents universally displayed nomi­nal respect for the constitution by using constitutional rules and proce­dures to circumvent term limits, with about two-thirds attempting to amend the constitution. But constitutional amendment is not the only legal strategy at the would-be overstayer’s disposal—presidents have tried many methods. Most notably, a number of incumbents have relied on their courts to interpret constitutional term limits out of the constitution. Other strategies uncovered by our study include: drafting a brand-new constitution and asserting that the new constitution effectively hits the reset button on term limits, finding a faithful agent replacement leader whom the incumbent can control after he is out of office, and delaying elections by citing some form of political instability.

Though evasion attempts are common, they are no sure thing, and often fail. Our survey is the first ever to document and analyze failed attempts. We discover that about one-third of incumbents who attempted to overstay were unsuccessful. Importantly, in the vast majority of these cases, they failed because the attempt encountered widespread popular resistance. By contrast, courts were mostly ineffectual in halting evasion attempts. This finding contradicts much of the existing literature on this subject, which has emphasized the potential role that courts can play in enforcing term limits, and thus in safeguarding states against democratic erosion. If anything, our survey reveals that courts mostly do the opposite: validate the president’s attempt to remain past his term. For those who seek to enforce constitutional term limits, this finding implies that build­ing broad resistance movements might be more effective than putting faith in courts.

The full text of this note may be found by clicking the PDF link to the left.

* Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law; Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Carnegie Foundation of New York. ** J.D., University of Virginia School of Law. *** Assistant Professor of Law, University of Virginia’s Department of Politics. **** Assistant Professor of Law, Law School of Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. ***** J.D., University of Virginia School of Law.

The authors thank Kevin Cope, Ben Doherty, William Forbath, Tom Ginsburg, Benjamin Helms, Sai Prakash, and Camilo Sanchez for helpful comments and conversations. They also thank conference participants at the University of Texas Law School for helpful comments and suggestions. This project was made possible due to a generous grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation of New York.

Introduction

In the spring of 2018, addressing a crowd of donors during an event at his Florida estate, President Donald J. Trump made what appeared to be a joke. He was talking about the recent amendment of China’s Constitu­tion to remove presidential term limits, allowing President Xi Jinping to serve in that office indefinitely. 1 1 David Shepardson, Trump Praises Chinese President Extending Tenure ‘for Life,’ Reuters (Mar. 3, 2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-china/trump-praises-chinese-president-extending-tenure-for-life-idUSKCN1GG015 [https://perma.cc/PY7G-X5SX]. ... Close About Xi, Trump said: “He’s now presi­dent for life, president for life. And he’s great . . . . And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” 2 2 Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). ... Close The crowd cheered and applauded in response. 3 3 Id. ... Close

President Trump’s suggestion may seem comically far-fetched to an American audience, even if by this point the joke—which he continues to make in one form or another on a regular basis—is starting to wear thin. 4 4 President Trump has made similar comments live and via Twitter many times since taking office. See Chris Cillizza, Donald Trump Just Keeps ‘Joking’ About Serving More than 2 Terms as President, CNN (June 18, 2019), https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/ donald-trump-term-limit/index.html [https://perma.cc/U598-T9RH]. ... Close Many foreign observers, however, would probably urge caution, as the evasion of constitutionally mandated presidential term limits is strikingly common around the world. China’s Xi Jinping is not the only incumbent who successfully extended term limits by amending the constitution: Lead­ers such as Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, and Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, among many others, have taken this path. 5 5 See infra section III.A. ... Close But if Trump  really  wanted  to  overstay,  amendment  is  not  the  only  way to “give  [it]  a  shot.” 6 6 Shepardson, supra note 1. The amendment strategy would require a change to the Twenty-Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes that “[n]o person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” U.S. Const. amend. XXII. Article V’s amendment procedures require that three-fourths of state legislatures or ratifying conventions approve an amendment for it to become part of the Constitution. Id. art. V. ... Close One option is to emulate Russia’s Vladimir Putin and find a successor who can be controlled. 7 7 See infra section IV.C. ... Close Another is to follow Bolivia’s Evo Morales and stack the highest court with sympathetic judges who are willing to reinterpret the constitution’s term limit provision. 8 8 See infra notes 364–371 and accompanying text. ... Close Yet another is to use Peru’s Alberto Fujimori’s strategy of calling a constitutional assem­bly and arguing that the new constitution hits the reset button on term limits. 9 9 See infra notes 304–305 and accompanying text. ... Close While most of these strategies might be hard to implement in a consolidated democracy like the United States, American constitutional scholars have proposed potential work-arounds. Most notably, Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar has argued that the President of the United States could potentially hold on to power for up to sixteen years, provided he or she alternated that office with the Vice Presidency. 10 10 See Akhil Reed Amar, Clinton–Obama, Obama–Clinton: How They Could Run Together and Take Turns Being President, Slate (Mar. 21, 2008), http://www.slate.com/ articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2008/03/clintonobama_obamaclinton.html [https://perma.cc/3LL4-LCC4]. ... Close Professor Amar’s argument is that the President—without violating the Twenty-Second Amend­ment—could resign (or transfer power under the Twenty-Fifth Amend­ment) prior to the end of his first term, be appointed as Vice President, win reelection as Vice President, switch back to the presidency, and subse­quently be reelected as President—all while maintaining the ability to seek reelection again as Vice President. 11 11 Id.; see also U.S. Const. amend. XXII. ... Close

These kinds of strategies are surprisingly common around the world. While many observers have pointed out that term limits are not set in stone, few have noted how regularly leaders attempt to evade those limits. In this Essay, we take stock. Based on a comprehensive and original survey of all countries with presidential term limits in their constitutions since 2000, we find that about one-third of all those who reached the end of their prescribed term attempted to remain in office. If we exclude the world’s consolidated democracies with maximum democratic perfor­mance, about half of the leaders that reached the end of their term devised some strategy to stay in power past the constitutionally mandated expira­tion date. But the phenomenon is not limited to failing democracies or functional autocracies. Even in some mature democracies like Costa Rica and South Korea, constitutional term limits are the subject of ongoing debate. 12 12 See infra notes 121–122 and accompanying text. ... Close

Notably, none of the twenty-first century’s evasion attempts involved ig­noring the constitution outright. 13 13 Although the period from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century saw a number of leaders ignore the constitution outright, this has not happened in the twenty-first century. A prior study reports nine such cases historically: Costa Rica (1870, 1885), Angola (1979), Bolivia (1971), Eritrea (1993), Guatemala (1898), Nicaragua (1911), Paraguay (1880), and Peru (1933). See Tom Ginsburg, James Melton & Zachary Elkins, On the Evasion of Term Limits , 52 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1807, app. at 1869 tbl.A1, 1870 tbl.A2 (2011) [hereinafter Ginsburg et al., On the Evasion]. ... Close Instead, incumbents universally showed nominal respect for the constitution by using constitutional rules and pro­cedures to circumvent term limits. The most common strategy to get around the constitution is simply to amend it: Sixty-six percent of the eva­sion attempts in our data involved amending the constitution in some way. For a powerful president, amendment is the most common strategy, pre­sumably because it gives him the most solid legal footing. Once the con­stitution has been amended, what at first seems like an illegitimate evasion attempt has become authorized by the country’s highest law. Amendment, however, can be risky: It requires the president to be sufficiently powerful to meet the supermajority that is required to change the constitution. In­deed, we find that in no fewer than forty percent of the cases in which presidents or their parties initiate constitutional amendments, they fail to pass them. In most cases, failure is caused by widespread popular re­sistance—as happened recently in Paraguay 14 14 See infra notes 204–220 and accompanying text. ... Close and Burkina Faso, 15 15 See infra notes 221–227 and accompanying text. ... Close where protesters literally burned down their national legislative chambers. Needless to say, such failures are politically costly; they require presidents to spend substantial political capital on what turns out to be a failed initia­tive, and their legacies may suffer. For that reason, amendment is not al­ways a feasible strategy for incumbents seeking to overstay their terms.

Less noticed is that constitutional amendment is only one of a number of tools at a would-be overstaying president’s disposal. The bulk of the existing literature focuses on constitutional amendment, 16 16 See. e.g., John M. Carey, The Reelection Debate in Latin America, Latin Am. Pol. & Soc’y, Spring 2003, at 119, 123–25 (studying evasion through amendment); see also Gideon Maltz, The Case for Presidential Term Limits, J. Democracy, Jan. 2007, at 128, 128–29 (noting that between 1992 and 2006, twenty-six presidents worldwide exceeded their term limits by eliminating the limits, securing judicial decisions that their first terms did not count, or amending their constitutions). In each of these studies, the range of strategies documented is more limited than ours. Our study further includes the most recent attempts. ... Close but there are a number of other ways to remain in office beyond the expiration date without blatantly violating the constitution. We believe that our survey is the most comprehensive attempt to document the full range of evasion strategies. In addition to constitutional amendment, we identify four distinct methods that do not involve amendment but that arguably do not violate the constitution. 17 17 For discussion of the amendment strategy, see infra Part III. ... Close Together, these strategies make up forty-four percent of the twenty-first century’s evasion attempts. The first of these is what we call the “blank slate theory,” which involves the drafting of a wholly new constitution along with the assertion that the new constitution means hitting the reset button on term limits. 18 18 See infra section IV.A. ... Close A second strategy is to use the courts to interpret away constitutional term limits. This strategy is re­markable, as term limit provisions are an example of a particularly clear constitutional rule—as opposed to a more ambiguous standard—and, at face value, seem particularly difficult to reinterpret. Even so, presidents who control their courts have been able to secure judgements that effec­tively removed term limits. 19 19 See infra section IV.B. ... Close A third approach is what we call the “faithful agent strategy,” which involves presidents seeking a successor they can con­trol so that they can continue to govern even while formally out of office. 20 20 See infra section IV.C. ... Close Finding a faithful agent can be difficult, but the strategy has a very high-profile success story: President Vladimir Putin, who used Dmitry Medvedev as a “placeholder president” after Putin’s term was up, while Putin pulled all the strings. 21 21 See Fiona Hill & Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin 7–8 (2015). ... Close A final strategy is to delay elections by citing some form of political instability. 22 22 See infra section IV.D. ... Close The success rate of these strategies is higher than for amendment: Collectively, attempts to delay elections succeeded in about two-thirds of the attempts, with the blank slate theory succeeding every time it was tried and the use of courts failing only once. 23 23 See infra Table 1. ... Close

Although evasion attempts are rampant and incumbents are in­creasingly savvy in overstaying without committing blatant constitutional violations, they often fail. About one-third of the incumbents who at­tempted to overstay were unsuccessful, especially those who attempted to amend the constitution risked failure: Forty percent of such attempts failed. 24 24 See infra Table 1. ... Close And while less common overall, the faithful agent theory proved particularly hard to execute: Two-thirds of the incumbents who tried this strategy failed. Ours is the first study to document failed attempts, allowing us to provide new insights into the reasons why some incumbents fail to overstay. While the collection of failed evasion attempts is in itself a rich treasure trove of noteworthy stories, this is far from its only value. We find two key insights about failed attempts to be novel and important.

The first is that courts do not play a strong role in preventing the ero­sion of term limits. Ever since the Colombian Constitutional Court pre­vented the highly popular President Alvaro Uribe from running a third time by declaring a constitutional amendment attempt to be unconstitu­tional, 25 25 David Landau, Presidential Term Limits in Latin America: A Critical Analysis of the Migration of the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine, 12 Law & Ethics Hum. Rts. 225, 231–33 (2018) [hereinafter Landau, Presidential Term Limits]. ... Close legal scholars have used the case to point out how courts can safeguard against democratic erosion. 26 26 See, e.g., Samuel Issacharoff, Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts 159 (2015) (describing the Constitutional Court decision as a “tremendous achievement” that prevented Colombia’s “descent into a one-man rule, with its attendant cronyism and compromise of governmental function”); Vincente F. Benítez R. & Germán A. González H., El Rol de las Cortes y la Protección de la Democracia: Una Aproximación desde Regímenes Transicionales [The Role of the Courts Sustaining Democracy: An Approach from Transitional Regimes], Rev. Der. del Estado [R.D.E.], enero-junio del 2016, at 41, 48 (Colom.) (detailing the creation of a robust Colombian Constitutional Court designed with the power to annul laws or constitutional reforms when they are unconstitutional); David Landau, Abusive Constitutionalism, 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 189, 203 (2013) (characterizing the Colombian Constitutional Court judgment as a decision that averted “a significant erosion of democracy by preventing a strong president from holding onto power indefinitely”); Gonzalo Andres Ramirez-Cleves, The Unconstitu­tionality of Constitutional Amendments in Colombia: The Tension Between Majoritarian Democracy and Constitutional Democracy, in Democratizing Constitutional Law: Per­spectives on Legal Theory and the Legitimacy of Constitutionalism 213, 227 (Thomas Bustamante & Bernardo Goncalves Fernandes eds., 2016) (“The doctrine of substitution of the Constitution in Columbia that has been implemented since the Judgment C-551 of 2003, which led to the declaration of unconstitutionality of five amendments to the Constitution, has been a good way to protect constitutional democracy against a majoritarian conception of democracy . . . .”). ... Close Yet our study reveals that faith in courts might be misguided. We find that the Colombian Constitutional Court is the only court that has ever halted an evasion attempt (in Niger, the Constitutional Court tried, but failed). 27 27 See infra notes 250–281 and accompanying text. ... Close Perhaps more remarkably, we find that most of the time, courts act as agents of the incumbent and actually help him to serve beyond the original expiration date. In what looks to be a growing trend, a number of courts, chiefly in Latin America, have essentially interpreted away the term limit provisions enshrined in their constitutions. In other cases, courts have validated presidents’ argu­ments that a new constitution represents a blank slate or that they can serve beyond their original expiration date when it is not possible to hold elections. In a full thirty percent of the cases where the incumbent success­fully overstayed, the courts played some role in this success. For the most part, then, courts have actually facilitated the removal of term limits.

A second important insight is that sustained popular resistance is a more effective means to halt evasion attempts than reliance on the courts. The bulk of failed cases involve constitutional amendment, and in the overwhelming majority of cases where popular amendment failed, it was because of unexpected headwinds in the form of popular resistance. After all, amendment is a highly visible event and it gives the opposition some­thing to mobilize around. Especially where opposition movements are able to build broad coalitions that include a range of actors, such as political parties, students, trade unions, business interests, clergy, ordinary citizens, and civil society groups, they can be quite effective in thwarting term limits evasion.

This Essay is a positive rather than normative exercise. There is a long-standing debate over the merits of term limits, going back to the American founding when the framers of the U.S. Constitution stood divided on the issue. 28 28 For example, Thomas Jefferson thought that term limits were necessary to curb executive ambition and considered the absence of term limits in the U.S. Constitution one of the biggest defects in the document. See Ginsburg et al., On the Evasion, supra note 13, at 1813, 1819; Marc P. Petracca, Rotation in Office: The History of an Idea , in Limiting Legislative Terms 19, 30 (Gerald Benjamin & Michael J. Malbin eds., 1993). ... Close Since then, much ink has been spilled over the question of whether term limits are desirable. 29 29 Compare Javier Corrales & Michael Penfold, Manipulating Term Limits in Latin America, J. Democracy, Oct. 2014, 157, 162–65 (suggesting that one of the most serious problems with consecutive reelection is the incumbency advantage and documenting that being the incumbent is the most powerful variable affecting the margin of victory in presidential elections), and Maltz, supra note 16, at 135–38 (arguing that term limits are important for party alternation, which in turn is crucial for democratization), with Paul Jacob, From the Voters with Care, in The Politics and Law of Term Limits 27, 38–39 (Edward H. Crane & Roger Pilon eds., 1994) (suggesting that opponents of term limits believe that they restrict democratic choice). For a middle approach, see Ginsburg et al., On the Evasion, supra note 13, at 1813–14 (characterizing term limits as default rules that may be overcome with sufficient political support). ... Close Our own normative starting point is that it is good for presidents to rotate in and out of power. But this Essay does not dwell long on the merits or demerits of term limits; the main goal is to improve our understanding of how term limit evasion happens, whether constitutions and constitutional courts play a role, and whether evasion attempts can be stopped. A cynical critique of this exercise might be that it offers a guidebook for would-be dictators on how to evade their constitu­tions. While we are mindful of this criticism, we believe that it is important to understand how evasion attempts unfold. Further, the exercise offers critical insights for those who seek to resist evasion attempts, such as the lesson that opponents of overstay should not put their faith in the courts but mobilize, build broad coalitions, and stage mass protests. Because in many cases popular resistance played a decisive role in thwarting term limit evasion, it is our hope that a better understanding of the array of strategies incumbents employ will be useful in guiding popular resistance against future attempts.

We are not the first to explore term limit evasion in this manner, but we believe our study differs in critical ways from earlier exercises. First, our ob­servations are global: Most of the prior literature consists of regional or single country studies. At least half a dozen  regional  studies  have  documented  term  limit  evasion  attempts  in  Latin America 30 30 See generally Landau, Presidential Term Limits, supra note 25 (exploring recent attempts by incumbent presidents in Latin America to eliminate or weaken presidential term limits); Elena Martínez-Barahona, Constitutional Courts and Constitutional Change: Analysing the Cases of Presidential Re-Election in Latin America, in New Constitutionalism in Latin America: Promises and Practices 289 (Detlef Nolte & Almut Schilling-Vacaflor eds., 2012) (examining the role of courts in presidential reelections in Costa Rica and Nicaragua); Carey, supra note 16 (summarizing the history of presidential reelection across Latin America and noting historical and contemporary arguments for and against presidential reelection); Javier Corrales, Can Anyone Stop the President? Power Asymmetries and Term Limits in Latin America, 1984–2016, Latin Am. Pol. & Soc’y, Summer 2016, at 3  [hereinafter Corrales, Power Asymmetries and Term Limits](studying thirty-six efforts to change presidential term limits in Latin America); Corrales & Penfold, supra note 29 (analyzing changes in reelection rules in Latin American countries by incumbent presidents); Tomáš Došek, Reformas de Reelección Presidencial en América Latina en 2015: Estrategias e Intereses Electorales de las Élites Políticas [Presidential Reelection Reforms in Latin America in 2015: Strategies and Interests of Political Elites], Rev. de Der. Electoral, Primer Semestre 2018, at 63–73 (Costa Rica) (reviewing reelection reforms in Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras in 2015). ... Close and Africa. 31 31 See generally Adeolu Durotoye, Resurgent Backsliding and Democracy in Africa, 18 Int’l J. Afr. & Asian Stud. 39 (2016) (analyzing attempts by dictators in several African countries to abrogate term limits); Daniel N. Posner & Daniel J. Young, The Institutionalization of Political Power in Africa, J. Democracy, July 2007, at 126 (suggesting that term limit enforcement is the biggest challenge for limiting presidential power); Denis M. Tull & Claudia Simons, The Institutionalisation of Power Revisited: Presidential Term Limits in Africa, Afr. Spectrum, Aug. 2017, at 79 (using term limits as an indicator for the institutionalization of power); Daniel Vencovsky, Presidential Term Limits in Africa, Conflict Trends, Apr. 2, 2007, at 15 (providing an overview of the forms of departure used by African leaders since the 1990s). ... Close Single-country studies have documented the nuances of evasion attempts in places like Colombia, 32 32 Carlos Bernal, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in the Case Study of Colombia: An Analysis of the Justification and Meaning of the Constitutional Replacement Doctrine, 11 Int’l J. Const. L. 339 (2013). ... Close Honduras, 33 33 David E. Landau, Rosalind Dixon & Yaniv Roznai, From an Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment to an Unconstitutional Constitution? Lessons from Honduras, 18 Global Constitutionalism 40 (2019) [hereinafter Landau et al., From an Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment]. ... Close Bolivia, 34 34 Alan E. Vargas Lima, La Reelección Presidencial en la Jurisprudencia del Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional de Bolivia: La Ilegítima Mutación de la Constitución a Través de una Ley de Aplicación Normativa [The Presidential Reelection in the Jurisprudence of the Plurinational Constitutional Court of Bolivia: The Illegitimate Mutation of the Constitution Through Normatively Applied Law], Rev. Boliviana de Der., enero 2015, at 457–59. ... Close Argentina, 35 35 Mario Serrafero, Reelección y Sucesión Presidencial: Poder y Continuidad: Argentina, América Latina y EE. UU. [Presidential Reelection and Succession: Power and Continuity: Argentina, Latin America, and the United States] 125–28 (1997). ... Close Russia, 36 36 William A. Clark, The 2012 Presidential Election in Russia: Putin Returns, 32 Electoral Stud. 374 (2013). ... Close   Ecuador, 37 37 Carlos Bernal Pulido, Aparicio Caicedo & Mario Serrafero, Reelección Indefinida vs. Democracia Constitucional: Sobre los Límites al Poder de Reforma Constitucional en el Ecuador [Indefinite Reelection vs. Constitutional Democracy: On the Limits of the Power of Constitutional Reform in Ecuador] 11–15 (2015). ... Close   Brazil, 38 38 Maria D’Alva G. Kinzo & Simone Rodrigues da Silva, Politics in Brazil: Cardoso’s Government and the 1998 Re-Election, 34 Gov’t & Opposition 243 (1999). ... Close   Venezuela, 39 39 Michael Penfold, La Democracia Subyugada: El Hiperpresidencialisimo Venezolano [Venezuela’s Hyperpresidentialism: Democracy Subjugated], 30 Rev. de Ciencia Política 21 (2010) (Chile). ... Close   Paraguay, 40 40 Ignacio González Bozzolasco, Paraguay: La Reelección Presidencial y los Inicios de la Carrera Electoral 2018 [Paraguay: The Presidential Reelection and the Beginnings of the 2018 Electoral Race], 37 Rev. de Ciencia Política 543, 544 (2017) (Chile). ... Close   Zambia, 41 41 Peter Burnell, Zambia’s 2001 Elections: The Tyranny of Small Decisions, ‘Non-Decisions’ and ‘Not Decisions,’ 23 Third World Q. 1103 (2002). ... Close Namibia, 42 42 Henning Melber, ‘Presidential Indispensability’ in Namibia: Moving out of Office but Staying in Power?, in Legacies of Power 98, 98–116 (Roger Southall & Henning Melber eds., 2006). ... Close Malawi, 43 43 Seán Morrow, Toxic Mushrooms? The Presidential Third-Term Debate in Malawi, in Legacies of Power, supra note 42, at 151, 151–74. ... Close and Uganda, 44 44 Roger Tangri, Politics and Presidential Term Limits in Uganda, in Legacies of Power, supra note 42, at 175, 175–96. ... Close among others. At present, there are two prior global surveys, one by Professor Gideon Maltz 45 45 See Maltz, supra note 16, at 128–29. ... Close and another by Professors Tom Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, and James Melton. 46 46 See Ginsburg et al., On the Evasion, supra note 13, at 1833–43. ... Close Our study differs from these studies in at least three essential ways. First, and most importantly, ours is the first survey to include failed evasion attempts. Second, we create and apply a more granular and detailed classification of the evasion attempts that do not involve amendment. Finally, we analyze a set of remarkable attempts at evasion using the courts, an emergent strategy that has not been cap­tured by the earlier studies.

The remainder of this Essay proceeds as follows. Part I reviews the different rationales for term limits. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the changing nature of authoritarianism. Though our analysis is not limited to authoritarian regimes, most of the term limit evasion strategies occur in countries with less than stellar democratic pedigrees. What is more, the nature of authoritarianism has changed profoundly since the 1990s. Instead of coming to power through coups d’état and governing through brute force, today’s authoritarians tend to be democratically elected and operate with nominally democratic institutions, including facially liberal constitutions. Yet in many cases, presidents are able to abuse these institu­tions to suit their purposes. It is vital to understand that term limit evasion operates against this backdrop: Today’s autocrats work around them by using the very constitutional processes that were meant to constrain overly powerful executives in the first place.

Part II introduces our original global survey and presents the key find­ings from our data. It records the prevalence of evasion attempts, along­side the prevalence of failures. We also document the characteristics of those that attempt to overstay. One small but notable finding is that every one of the leaders that attempted to overstay was male. We highlight that here because, in the remainder of this Essay, we will use the male pronoun to refer to incumbents who seek to evade the constitution.

Parts III and IV take a deep dive into the particularities of the different evasion strategies. Part III focuses on amendment, which remains the most common method. It describes the different versions of the amendment approach and what it takes for amendments to succeed. Throughout, we provide examples from around the world, including Rwanda, Burundi, Tajikistan, Paraguay, Burkina Faso, Malawi, and others. Part IV focuses on strategies other than constitutional amendment that arguably still do not amount to a constitutional violation: the blank slate theory, using courts to reinterpret the constitution, the faithful agent strategy, and delaying elections. It reflects on what is required for these strategies to be successful and draws on examples from places like Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guyana, and Sudan to reflect upon the rationales behind these strategies. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on what our research tells us about the constitution’s ability to constrain the executive.

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The first amendment, constitution check: did the founders want term limits for supreme court justices.

March 31, 2015 | by Lyle Denniston

Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center's constitutional literacy adviser, looks at comments from Mike Huckabee about the Founders’ intentions for a Supreme Court with term limits and what Alexander Hamilton said about the issue.

“Prospective presidential nominee Mike Huckabee called Saturday for the imposition of term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, saying that the nation’s founders never intended to create lifetime, irrevocable posts. ‘Nobody should be in an unelected position for life,’ the former Arkansas governor said in an interview, expanding on remarks he made during an hour-long speech at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda. ‘If the president who appoints them can only serve eight years, the person they appoint should never serve 40. That has never made sense to me; it defies that sense of public service.’ Huckabee said the Federalist Papers , written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, supported his view that the nation’s founders came close to imposing judicial term limits in the Constitution; they never could have imagined people would want to serve in government for decades, he said.”

– Story in The Los Angeles Times , on March 28, describing an interview with the ex-governor, who is expected to announce soon that he will again seek the presidency.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND…

Much of the American Constitution endures, after more than two centuries, in its original form, and that is a testament to the wisdom of the founding generation that put it together. But it is sometimes true that a commentator here and there will treat the original Constitution as if it said something different from what it actually says, something more agreeable to that person.

Politicians on the stump may indulge themselves in that kind of revisionism because it better suits an aspiration they may have for America. One perhaps can expect, as America moves more deeply into the next round of presidential politics, that the Constitution will take on new meanings on the stump. Given that it is so easy to disprove such rewriting, it is surprising that even politicians eager for votes would allow themselves to be shown to be wrong.   That, however, seems not to be much of a deterrent.

One constitutional fantasy is that the Supreme Court should not really have members who can serve for their lifetimes, a choice left entirely to them personally so long as they behave themselves and do not give reasons to seek to unseat them involuntarily.

The opening words of the Constitution’s Article III, describing the judiciary that the original document created at the national level, reads this way (with emphasis added): “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior… ”

The phrase “good behavior” obviously implies that there is no limit on how long a Justice may serve, once approved for serving on the court. That implication is supported by the impeachment provision of the Constitution, contained in Article II.   Just as the president and vice president may be removed from office by impeachment, so, too, can federal judges, including Justices of the Supreme Court. But that can only happen if they are convicted of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Those, surely, are words that describe the opposite of “good behavior” for a judge, so they give meaning to the question of Justices’ right to continue in office indefinitely.

If former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has been quoted accurately by the Los Angeles Times , he has a perception of what the founding generation wanted regarding judicial tenure that seems to run counter to Article III and to the history of the founding years.   There is nothing in Article III, or in the impeachment provision, that supports the notion that “the nation’s founders never intended to create lifetime, irrevocable posts” for Supreme Court Justices, or for other federal judges.

That part of Article III has never been revised, and the prospects that it will be – say, for example, by an amendment to impose term limits – seem quite remote if not non-existent.

But Huckabee’s quarrel is not only with constitutional language, but with what that very influential document of the founding era – the Federalist Papers – has to say on the subject of the terms of service on the Supreme Court.

The most authoritative and thorough Federalist Paper on “the judicial department” is No. 78, published on May 28, 1788.   Like all other papers, it was published under the pen name “Publius,” but this one was actually written by Alexander Hamilton.   To suggest, as Gov. Huckabee does, that Hamilton and the other authors of the Federalist “came close to imposing judicial term limits” does not take account of Paper No. 78.

Here is some of what Hamilton wrote there, describing the sense of the Philadelphia Convention that drafted the original Constitution:

“According to the plan of the convention, all judges who may be appointed by the United Sttews are to hold their offices during good behavior; which is conformable to the most approved of the state constittions….Its propriety having been drawn into question by the adversaries of that plan is no light symptom of the rage for objection which disorders their imaginations and judgments. The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government….It is the best expedient which can be devised in any government to secure a steady, upright and impartial administrations of the laws….This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

There is in those sentiments not the slightest hint that Hamilton, or Madison or Jay, “came close to imposing judicial term limits in the Constitution” or that “they never could have imagined people would want to serve in government for decades.”

The Huckabee musings on this subject run into another logical barrier in the structure of the Constitution.. He was quoted as saying that, if presidents who appoint members of the court can only serve eight years, the person they name should not serve 40 years. But, until the Twenty-Second Amendment was written into the Constitution in 1951, there were no term limits for those who served as president. So, for 163 years after Article III was put into the Constitution, there was no potential inconsistency between the tenure of presidents and of Supreme Court Justices.

Franklin Roosevelt, the last president not affected by the Twenty-Second Amendment, served for three full terms, plus 83 days into a fourth term. One of the eight Justices he named to the Court set the record for the longest service on the court: William O. Douglas, who served more than 36 years.   While the nation turned out to be uncomfortable with a presidential term of the length of Franklin Roosevelt’s, there has been no serious effort to curb the service of the Justices.   And that seems to reflect the founders’ true wishes.

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Brush up on the Constitution: Why American presidents are limited to two terms in office

After george washington was elected the first u.s. president, he decided that two terms was enough. but one president of the 20th century disagreed..

• Paul G. Summers is an attorney. He formerly served as an appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and Attorney General of Tennessee.

Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the Constitution and civics  written by Paul G. Summers,  retired judge and state attorney general.

In November 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) won a third term as president of the United States. A dozen years later he would have been barred from running for a third term because of the 22nd Amendment. That amendment was ratified in 1951.

Section 1 provides that “(n)o person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice….”  And no person who has held the office, “…or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President(,) shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” 

The Amendment did not apply to a president holding office when the amendment was proposed by Congress. The amendment did not affect anyone holding the office of “President during the remainder of such term” after it was ratified.

The second section provides that it must be ratified by three-quarters of the States within seven years of submission. Otherwise, it would not become operative.

Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns.

Until FDR, no president served more than two terms

FDR had been president during the tumultuous 1930s, leading us through the Depression. He won a fourth term as president in 1944, but he died a few months after taking office in 1945. 

After the death of FDR, the Republicans sought the 22nd Amendment to limit the terms to two. George Washington, our first president, declined to run after two terms.  He declared that two terms were enough for any president. So, the 22nd Amendment took effect in 1951; and the office is limited to a maximum of two full terms, or eight years.

I served a term of about eight years as the Attorney General of Tennessee. I can personally attest that as AG, such is a full-time job, 24/7.  I appreciate and am thankful for having had the opportunity to serve my home state. It was a rewarding experience.

Certainly the same is true of a person serving as president. The job of president is 24/7/365. There is a daily crisis somewhere in the world which affects our nation. Eight years is a reasonable, sufficient, lengthy time to accomplish the mission of serving as President of the United States.

We shall continue our study in the next article about the 23rd Amendment. Please continue to read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  I promise you that such study is time well spent.

Paul G. Summers is an attorney.  He formerly served as an appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and Attorney General of Tennessee. Raised in Fayette County, Judge Summers lives in Holladay and Nashville.

EssayEmpire

Term limits essay.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, term limits were imposed for representatives. However, in 1787, when the new U.S. Constitution was drafted and debated in Philadelphia, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention decided against any term limit provisions in the Constitution. This thought reversal has provided fodder for a continuous debate ever since.

Term limits are restrictions bound by law that limit an elected official to a specific number of terms for a particular office. Term limits appear at both the federal and state levels. Although absent from the Constitution during the early part of the nation’s history, President George Washington set the precedent for an unenforced presidential term limit of two terms. Every president since George Washington through Herbert Hoover recognized the significance of Washington’s actions and limited their time in office to two terms. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first and only president to be elected to the presidency four times. His actions set forth a movement to legally restrict the president to two terms. In 1951, the United States passed the Twenty-second Amendment, which made it impossible for a president to serve more than two terms. Since its ratification, opponents of the measure, including several presidents, have questioned the constitutionality of the amendment and have voiced their objections to it.

Several state constitutions include provisions for term limits for state governors and state legislators as well. Beginning in the 1990s, in response to a poor economy and an increasing cynicism toward an unresponsive government, states across the nation became witness to a democratic movement that sought to hold government accountable to the people. Several states introduced referendums and initiatives seeking to limit their elected officials to specific term limits.

Regardless of whether term limits are imposed at the state or federal level, the contentious issue has its share of proponents and opponents. Although term limits have become an integral part of America’s political system, opponents stand behind several arguments in seeking its repeal. First, opponents assert that term limits are undemocratic: The very nature of limiting the right of voters to exercise their vote in the manner they choose and selecting the representative of their choice is undemocratic. If constituents prefer to reelect their representative, regardless of how many times the individual has served, democracy provides that right. If term limits are used to ensure that only the most experienced and upstanding hold office, the voters can perform the same task, by voting them out of office, without the need of restrictions. Second, opponents contend that term limits dilute the pool of experienced politicians: By imposing term limits, the pool of candidates is effectively limited to those with little to no elective office experience. As in any job, those with experience and seniority are better able to start exercising their duties on day one without the restrictions of a learning curve. Furthermore, those who perform well, have experience, and are not restricted by term limits can provide their constituents with greater benefits than their first year colleagues. Third, opponents believe that if term limits are imposed to increase accountability, it actually fosters the opposite: Knowing that an elected official is coming to the end of the term, no incentive exists for them to remain accountable or responsive to the voters, instead they may forsake the voters’ interest on behalf of others.

Those who support term limits often argue that term limits provide the opportunity for new people who have fresh ideas and are more innovative to serve in government. Further, term limits eliminate the need for politicians to consider political concerns when making decisions. Since they will not be up for reelection, term limited officials can freely exercise their vote and duties without fear of political reprisal. In addition, supporters contend that term limits reduce the power of incumbency because elected officials are no longer able to use the benefits of their office to ensure their own victory at the expense of a candidate who is less well known or is a financial underdog.

Bibliography:

• Doron, Gideon, and Michael Harris. Term Limits. New York: Lexington Books, 2001.
• Kousser,Thad. Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Lijphardt, Arend. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1999.

This example Term Limits Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

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The intent of term limits was to prevent career politicians. The reality has been an erosion of legislative power.

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Limiting terms for elected officials remains a popular item as a dysfunctional Congress — often mirrored at the state legislative level — tests voters’ patience. The U.S. Term Limits website even lists about 125 federal lawmakers as co-sponsors of legislation aimed at passing a constitutional amendment to limit terms in Congress.

The argument is simple: Lawmakers overstay their time, becoming distant from those they serve and sometimes corrupt in the bargain.

Yet the ultimate term limit is an election. In the March Texas primary, of the 86 Republicans in Texas’ 150-member House of Representatives, 10 didn’t run for reelection. Some of these representatives knew that Gov. Greg Abbott’s drive to fill the House with public education reform allies would make reelection difficult. For many who did run, it did. Of the 76 who stood for renomination, nine lost their primaries outright and eight were forced into runoffs , including the powerful speaker of the house. Thus, the 2024 turnover ranges from a low of 19 to a high of 27 of 86, assuming no surprises in November.

California’s Failed Example

In 1990, California voters passed a proposition with a narrow 52 percent majority that imposed term limits on state legislators, eliminated pensions for lawmakers, and transferred the responsibility for setting their pay to a governor-appointed commission.

The idea of limiting terms has roots in the early days of the American republic, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the movement saw substantial legislative success. When California became one of the first states to pass term limits for state legislators through Proposition 140, it set a precedent, and by 1996, 20 states had adopted similar measures for their legislatures. Since then, two more states have adopted term limits while in six states, they were repealed, two by the legislature and four by the courts.

I was ambivalent about term limits back in 1990, as were many Californians. One of the main arguments for term limits then was that they would act to remove the highly effective and highly partisan speaker of the assembly, Willie Brown. Brown reigned as speaker from 1980 to 1995 — 15 years with the gavel. There have been 13 speakers in the 29 years since then.

However, in the 34 years since California voters passed term limits, I’ve seen how they’ve weakened lawmakers’ power while shifting that power to unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch and lobbyists representing labor unions, large corporations, and other special interest groups.

California voters later modified the term limit law, passing Proposition 28 in 2012, limiting total legislative service to 12 years. Prior to its passage, time in the assembly was limited to six years while service in the Senate was limited to eight years.

During my tenure as a California state assemblyman from 2004 to 2010, I witnessed firsthand the detrimental shift in power dynamics caused by term limits. One glaring example was my investigation into the California Department of Parks and Recreation. I uncovered systematic abuse where some senior state employees arranged to live in state-owned housing while paying significantly below-market rents. Some paid as little as $180 a month for houses that could fetch more than $3,000 a month on the open market.

I presented my findings to the director of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Her response was telling; she reminded me that I had an expiration date as a legislator, implying that my efforts to ensure accountability would be short-lived. As it turned out, she was right. This encounter highlighted a critical flaw in term limits: Lawmakers are seen as temporary obstacles by entrenched bureaucrats, diminishing lawmakers’ ability to conduct long-term oversight and demand accountability.

Despite the constraints of both term limits and being in the minority, I managed to pass AB 1708 in 2006, a bill requiring the state to account for the value of housing provided to employees as a benefit and to charge market-rate rents. However, the lack of sustained legislative oversight led to the law being ignored. Years later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the abuse of housing benefits continued unabated, confirming that the absence of experienced legislators weakened the enforcement of laws.

The power vacuum created by term limits is often filled by lobbyists. With legislators cycling out of office every few years, lobbyists become the institutional memory and de facto policymakers. They possess the continuity and expertise that term-limited legislators lack, leading to disproportionate influence over the legislative process. This runs counter to the intent of our representative form of government, where the people invest their power in elected representatives.

Advantage of Experience

Comparing lawmaker turnover highlights the issue further. The Texas Legislature, while having no term limits, still experiences significant turnover but also benefits from having long-serving legislators who provide continuity and expertise. In contrast, California’s term limits lead to higher turnover, with lawmakers often being pushed out of office due to term limits, thus lacking the continuity seen in states like Texas.

Texas legislators can build experience over time despite turnover, which contrasts with California’s enforced inexperience due to term limits.

This is seen in the average tenure for members of the Texas House, approximately 7.5 years, while members of the Texas Senate average about 11 years. In contrast, in California, the average tenure in the Assembly is about 5.6 years, and in the state Senate, it’s roughly 6.5 years​​.

Experienced lawmakers are crucial for effective governance. They understand the intricacies of policy, maintain valuable relationships, and have the historical context necessary to hold bureaucrats accountable. Term limits disrupt this, leading to a cycle of inexperienced legislators who are less equipped to oversee complex governmental functions and more reliant on external actors — actors not beholden to the voters.

The intent of term limits was to foster fresh perspectives and prevent career politicians. However, the reality has been an erosion of legislative power and accountability, with bureaucrats and lobbyists filling the void. Further, in term-limited California, some half of term-limited lawmakers continue to make a career of politics, running for U.S. Congress or local office. Not only did Willie Brown get elected mayor, but Karen Bass, who served as speaker during some of the time I served in the legislature, later became a U.S. representative and is now mayor of Los Angeles.

My experience as a California state assemblyman demonstrated the critical need for experienced lawmakers who can provide sustained oversight and ensure laws are enforced. It’s time to reconsider term limits and their unintended consequences on governance and accountability.

Term limits are best enforced by the voters.

• bureaucrats
• career politicians
• Greg Abbott
• Legislative Power
• term limits
• Willie Brown

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Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Prospects of polymer coatings for all solid-state and emerging li-ion batteries †.

* Corresponding authors

a Electrification and Energy Infrastructures Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

b Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), Helmholtzstraße 8, 89081 Ulm, Germany

Polymers possess processing flexibility as they can be coated on cathode particles before/after electrode fabrication and on the solid-state electrolyte surface in all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). Their narrow electrochemical stability window limits the use of polymers directly as an electrolyte against high voltage cathodes. However, when a polymer is coated directly on battery cathodes and cycled with conventional liquid electrolytes, they exhibit superior battery performance in comparison to uncoated ones. A deeper insight was not sought in the literature. There might be a great possibility of in situ formation of an ultra-thin protective layer in-between the polymer and cathode interface at the coating development stage or in the formation cycle of the electrochemical cell. The current ASSBs demand flexible, easily scalable coating materials, which can accommodate the volume expansion–contraction during cycling and can minimize the lattice stress. However, a much better fundamental understanding is needed on polymer/ceramic interfaces. This focused review is concentrated on flexible polymers with high ionic and electronic conductivities that can be used for coating cathode particles and Li anodes. Overall, this article has analyzed and validated the application of various types of polymers in lithium-ion batteries and ASSBs comprehensively with an emphasis on the effect of coating morphologies and thickness on performance. Finally, this review gives a brief discussion on the prospects and suitability of polymers as coating layers.

• This article is part of the themed collections: Journal of Materials Chemistry A HOT Papers and Journal of Materials Chemistry A Recent Review Articles

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Prospects of polymer coatings for all solid-state and emerging Li-ion batteries

R. Amin, U. Nisar, M. M. Rahman, M. Dixit, A. Abouimrane and I. Belharouak, J. Mater. Chem. A , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4TA01061B

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