The 22nd Amendment: Why No US President Can Serve More Than Two Terms

The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution limits the president to two elected terms in office. This amendment was part of a broader set of 273 recommendations made to Congress by the Hoover Commission, established by President Harry S. Truman to overhaul and improve the federal government. The formal proposal was presented to Congress on March 24, 1947, and the amendment received ratification on February 27, 1951.

This amendment was initiated following President Franklin D. Roosevelt's unprecedented election to four terms, during which he served for 12 years until his death in 1945. In response, Congress proposed the 22nd Amendment to formalise presidential term limits.

What The 22nd Amendment says

• Section 1 of the 22nd Amendment: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, 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. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.”

• Section 2 of the 22nd Amendment: “This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.”

What are The 22nd Amendment's main takeaways

• A US president can only serve for a maximum of 10 years.
• No one is eligible to serve as president more than twice.
• A person is only eligible to be elected president once if they have held the office for more than two years (for instance, a vice president who becomes president).

Nevertheless, the discussion surrounding term limits continued. According to a report in the New York Times, in 1987, then-President Ronald Reagan expressed a desire to initiate a movement aimed at repealing the constitutional amendment that restricts presidents to two terms. If successful, this could have enabled Reagan — then in his late 70s and a few years away from an official Alzheimer's diagnosis — to seek re-election.