Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution closed a gap the founders had deliberately left open. On the 27th of February, 1951, the Minnesota legislature cast the deciding vote. Thirty-six of the forty-eight states had now agreed, and the amendment became part of the Constitution. Its requirement was brief but sweeping: no person could be elected president more than twice. This deceptively simple rule was the product of over a century of argument. Behind it lay a single extraordinary exception to the precedent set by the republic's earliest presidents. What had made the two-term tradition so durable for so long? Who finally broke it? And what questions did the amendment's drafters leave unresolved that still generate debate today?
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both favored granting the presidency a lifetime term. They were not alone. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates debated term limits alongside questions about who would elect the president and what role the office would properly hold. Virginia's George Mason objected forcefully, arguing that entrenching a president for life was elective monarchy under another name. An early draft of the Constitution had taken the opposite extreme, restricting the president to a single seven-year term. The Framers ultimately chose a middle path: four-year terms, with no restriction on how many times a person could serve.
George Washington's health was declining as his second term entered its final year in 1796. His political opponents had relentlessly attacked him, especially after he signed the Jay Treaty. He decided against a third run and announced the decision to the nation in his September 1796 Farewell Address. Thomas Jefferson articulated the underlying principle eleven years later, writing: "If some termination to the services of the chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally for years, will in fact, become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance."
Political scientist Bruce Peabody described a scholarly consensus that had formed around Washington's example. Historians had long argued that Washington's decision to retire established a vital check on any one person accumulating too much presidential power. Three of the four presidents who followed Jefferson upheld that principle: Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson each left after two terms. Only Martin Van Buren, among that group, sought a second term; he lost the 1840 election.
At the outset of the Civil War, the seceding states drafted a constitution that closely resembled the original document. On the question of presidential tenure, however, they departed from the Union model: the Confederate president was limited to a single six-year term.
Ulysses S. Grant's 1872 re-election sparked serious discussions within Republican circles about a potential run in 1876. Public opposition and congressional resistance killed the idea, and Grant left after two terms. He returned to the arena at the 1880 Republican National Convention, seeking a non-consecutive third nomination, and narrowly lost to James A. Garfield.
Theodore Roosevelt's situation was more complicated than Grant's. He had succeeded to the presidency on the 14th of September, 1901, after William McKinley was assassinated, and won a full term in 1904. He declined to seek another term in 1908, then ran for a non-consecutive third term in 1912 and lost to Woodrow Wilson. Even Wilson later drafted a strategy for a third term in 1924. He died in February of that year before he could act on it. Franklin D. Roosevelt, running for a third term in 1940, would put the tradition to its most consequential test.
Franklin Roosevelt's approach to the 1940 Democratic National Convention was deliberately ambiguous. He sent a message saying he would run only if the delegates chose to draft him, and that they were free to vote for whomever they wished. The delegates interpreted this as a signal of willingness, and Roosevelt was renominated on the first ballot. Republican Wendell Willkie ran against the idea of open-ended presidential tenure. Democrats pointed to the war in Europe as reason enough to set precedent aside. Roosevelt won decisively, becoming the only president to exceed eight years in office.
Thomas E. Dewey was the Republican nominee four years later. Near the end of the 1944 campaign, Dewey announced his support for a constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms. According to Dewey, "four terms, or sixteen years, is the most dangerous threat to our freedom ever proposed." He also raised the question of the president's age. Roosevelt projected enough energy and confidence to retain voters' support and was elected to a fourth term.
Roosevelt's health had been deteriorating throughout the campaign. On the 12th of April, 1945, only days after his fourth inauguration, he died. Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed the office. In the midterm elections that fall, Republicans took control of both the House and the Senate. Many had campaigned on the issue of presidential tenure. The 80th Congress, which convened in January 1947, would move quickly to translate that campaign pledge into proposed constitutional text.
Earl C. Michener introduced House Joint Resolution 27, setting a limit of two four-year terms for future presidents. On the 6th of February, 1947, the House approved it by 285-121, with 47 Democrats joining the majority.
Robert A. Taft would shape the Senate's version of the amendment, but not before two provisions were debated and discarded. The Senate's initial bill would have required ratification through state conventions rather than state legislatures. It also would have barred anyone who had served more than 365 days in each of two terms from any further presidential service. Both provisions were stripped when the full Senate took up the bill. Taft added a clause clarifying how often a vice president who had succeeded to the presidency could then be elected in his own right. The Senate passed its version 59-23, with 16 Democrats in favor, on the 12th of March.
On the 21st of March, 1947, the House agreed to the Senate's revisions. The proposed amendment was then submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. The amendment included a seven-year deadline for the process to be completed, setting an outer limit of 1954.
Maine and Michigan became the first states to ratify, both acting on the 31st of March, 1947. That was ten days after Congress had submitted the amendment. Iowa, Kansas, and New Hampshire all ratified the following day. Five more states approved it in the first two weeks of April, including California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The early pace suggested the process might wrap up quickly, but momentum slowed considerably.
Virginia did not ratify until the 28th of January, 1948. South Dakota waited until January 1949. Louisiana held out until the 17th of May, 1950. By that point, 25 states had approved the amendment. Eleven more were needed, and they would arrive in a concentrated burst in early 1951.
Montana ratified on the 25th of January, 1951, followed by Indiana on the 29th and Idaho on the 30th. New Mexico, Wyoming, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas all ratified through February. Utah and Nevada both approved the amendment on the 26th of February, bringing the total to 35 ratifying states. The 36th ratification followed the next day. On the 1st of March, 1951, Administrator of General Services Jess Larson issued a certificate proclaiming the Twenty-second Amendment duly ratified. It was now formally part of the Constitution.
Two states, Massachusetts and Oklahoma, formally rejected the amendment. Five others, including Arizona, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Washington, and West Virginia, took no action. Harry S. Truman had been in the White House when Congress first proposed the amendment in 1947. The grandfather clause in the amendment's first section explicitly shielded him from its new restrictions.
Harry S. Truman initially entered the 1952 presidential race. His job approval stood at around 27%. A poor showing in the 1952 New Hampshire primary convinced him to withdraw.
Since the amendment became operative in 1951, six twice-elected presidents have been constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. They are Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Donald Trump, elected to two non-consecutive terms, is also constitutionally barred from a third presidential election under the amendment's terms.
The amendment's interaction with the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, has generated ongoing legal debate. The Twelfth Amendment states that anyone constitutionally ineligible for the presidency is also ineligible to serve as vice president. Whether a former two-term president could be elected vice president and then succeed to the presidency remains an open question. The Supreme Court took up term limits as qualifications for office in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton in 1995, but that case concerned congressional limits rather than the presidency. Neither the Twenty-second Amendment nor the Twelfth limits how many times a two-term former president could be elected vice president. Such a person could succeed to the presidency without ever winning a third direct presidential election. The practical applicability of that gap has never been tested, as no former two-term president has ever been elected vice president.
In 1956, five years after the amendment was ratified, the first congressional efforts to repeal it began. Over the following half century, 54 joint resolutions were introduced seeking to remove the two-term presidential limit.
Representative Jose E. Serrano introduced nine separate resolutions to repeal the amendment between 1997 and 2013, one per Congress, all unsuccessful. In January 2025, Representative Andy Ogles introduced a joint resolution proposing a change to the Constitution. It would allow a president to serve a third term if the first two were non-consecutive. The bill was written with Donald Trump specifically in mind, the only living president to have served two non-consecutive terms. The Court wrote in Thornton that "the Nation as a whole... has imposed a limit on the number of terms that the President may serve." By 2025, a resolution in Congress was asking whether the nation wished to change that limit.
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Common questions
What does the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution do?
The Twenty-second Amendment limits any person from being elected president more than twice. It also bars anyone who has served more than two years of another president's unexpired term from being elected president more than once. It was ratified in 1951.
Why was the Twenty-second Amendment passed?
The Twenty-second Amendment was passed in response to Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to four consecutive presidential terms. After Republicans won control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections, limiting presidential tenure became a legislative priority. Congress approved the amendment on the 21st of March, 1947.
When was the Twenty-second Amendment ratified?
The Twenty-second Amendment was ratified on the 27th of February, 1951, when the 36th state approved it. Congress had submitted it to the states on the 21st of March, 1947. Administrator of General Services Jess Larson issued the official certificate of ratification on the 1st of March, 1951.
Which presidents have been barred from running for a third term by the Twenty-second Amendment?
Six twice-elected presidents have been constitutionally barred from a third election under the Twenty-second Amendment: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Donald Trump, elected to two non-consecutive terms, is also barred from a third presidential election under the amendment.
Can a former two-term president serve as vice president under the Twenty-second Amendment?
The question is legally unresolved. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, states that no one constitutionally ineligible for the presidency may serve as vice president, but scholars disagree about whether the Twenty-second Amendment's election bar extends to vice presidential eligibility. No former two-term president has ever served as vice president, so the question has not been tested in court.
What did Harry Truman say about the Twenty-second Amendment?
Harry S. Truman described the Twenty-second Amendment as stupid and called it one of the worst amendments to the Constitution, excepting only the Prohibition Amendment. Despite being exempt from the amendment's restrictions, Truman entered the 1952 presidential race but withdrew after his job approval fell to around 27%.
All sources
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