Term Limits

The problem

The Constitution puts no limit on how long anyone can hold federal power. The result is a government of careers: members of Congress who serve for decades, and Supreme Court justices who now average about twenty-eight years on the bench — more than double the tenure of high-court judges in comparable democracies.¹ No other major democracy gives lifetime, unbounded seats to the judges of its constitutional court.²³ Within the United States itself, 339 of the 344 justices on state supreme courts serve limited terms, face a retirement age, or both.⁴

Unbounded tenure has costs beyond stagnation. When a Supreme Court seat can last forty years, every vacancy carries generational stakes — and confirmation fights, retirement timing, and even presidential elections warp around them. Voters cannot fix this at the state level: twenty-three states tried to term-limit their own members of Congress,⁵ and the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995) that only a constitutional amendment can do it.⁶ This is not a problem legislation can reach — by the Court’s own ruling, only an amendment can.

The principle

Four parts, across six sections, each doing a specific job:

The U.S. Term Limits text, word for word. Three House terms and two Senate terms — the exact congressional amendment U.S. Term Limits has carried in Congress since 2017 — and for which, by the organization’s own count, fourteen state legislatures have formally applied.⁷⁸ Adopting the movement’s own text, numbers included, is a deliberate choice: the 1990s effort fractured over rival caps,⁹ and this project would rather join thirty years of invested effort than reopen that fight. The trade is stated plainly below: the state evidence and deliberative polling point toward twelve-year caps,¹⁰¹¹ and the House limit here is six years. Their counting rules also close a real gap — a partial term filled for more than a year counts, so a vacancy appointment cannot quietly reset the clock.

Eighteen-year fixed terms on the Supreme Court. Justices keep the office and the independence of life tenure, but exercise the Supreme Court’s judicial power for a single, nonrenewable eighteen-year term, with one term beginning every two years. Staggered seats turn each vacancy from a generational event into a routine one: every president gets two appointments per term, no more, regardless of retirement timing or health.¹² This is the design used, in essence, by nearly every constitutional court in the democratic world.²³ A calendar only works if nothing can stop it, so each seat’s eighteen years run from a fixed date whether or not the seat has been filled, and the Court carries on with the justices it has until it is. Refusing to confirm no longer holds a seat open for a friendlier president; it shortens the tenure of whoever is eventually confirmed. The Senate keeps its full power to reject a nominee.

A judicial retirement age. An eighteen-year term does most of the work, but not all of it: a term that begins at fifty ends at sixty-eight, so the fixed term alone never reaches the question of capacity late in life. A retirement age is the backstop. It is the ordinary rule almost everywhere else — thirty-one states and the District of Columbia set one for their own judges,¹³ and constitutional courts abroad typically pair a fixed term with a ceiling of seventy to seventy-five.³ The Supreme Court has upheld a state judicial retirement age against both federal age-discrimination law and the Equal Protection Clause.¹⁴

An anti-evasion rule. Around the world, term limits die by legal-looking evasion — a friendly amendment here, a court reinterpretation there — far more often than by repeal.¹⁵¹⁶ So no change to these limits can ever benefit the people in office when it passes. Loosening the rules for your successors is legitimate constitutional politics; loosening them for yourself is not.

The draft text

Sections 1–3 are the congressional term-limits amendment advanced by U.S. Term Limits, adopted word for word (H.J.Res. 12 and S.J.Res. 1, 119th Congress).⁷ Sections 4–6 — the Supreme Court terms, the judicial retirement age, and the anti-evasion rule — are this project’s additions.

Why it can pass

Term limits are the strongest full-spectrum case we have measured — the highest support and the smallest partisan gap of any structural reform:¹⁷¹⁸

The support survives argument. In the University of Maryland’s deliberative survey (2023), respondents heard the strongest cases both for and against before deciding — and 83% still backed an amendment (86% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, 84% of independents).¹¹

The retirement age has its own cross-party record. Pew found 74% for a maximum age for Supreme Court justices in 2023 — 68% of Republicans and 82% of Democrats¹⁹ — and Fox News found 81% for a mandatory retirement age for justices in 2024, at 71% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats, with the largest gains since 2022 among Republicans.²⁰ Voters have also decided this question directly, five times, and every time they have kept the cap: legislatures in Hawaii, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming voted almost unanimously to raise or repeal their judicial retirement ages, and voters refused four times by wide margins and approved the fifth by one point.^2122232425

The country has done this before, and nearly done this exact thing:

• The 22nd Amendment (ratified 1951) term-limited the presidency — evidence that a term-limits amendment can be proposed and ratified in the modern era.²⁶²⁷
• The House has voted for it twice: 227–204 in 1995 and 217–211 in 1997 — majorities both times, short of two-thirds — the closest a congressional term-limits amendment has come. Both floor votes were on two-Senate-term / six-House-term versions; the three-term House limit adopted here is the one its movement has organized around since.⁹²⁸⁷
• Sixteen states limit their own legislators today;²⁹ thirty-three set retirement ages for judges;³⁰ and fourteen states have formally called for a term-limits amendment convention⁸ — the same pressure that historically moves Congress to act first.

If it passes: the law today and the day after

What the draft would change in existing law, and what it leaves to Congress, the states, and the courts. (How ratified amendments interact with existing law in general is covered in After ratification.)

Federal law today

No federal statute limits service in Congress or on the Supreme Court; the only federal term limit in force is the 22nd Amendment.²⁶ The Constitution lists three qualifications for Congress, and the Supreme Court has held that neither the states nor Congress may add to them,⁶ and that each House may refuse to seat a member-elect only for failing a qualification the Constitution itself prescribes.³¹ Article III gives judges their offices “during good behaviour”;³² a statute fixes the Court at nine justices,³³ and another lets a retiring justice keep the office while leaving regular active service.³⁴ Bills would set eighteen-year terms by statute,³⁵³⁶ a route most commentators read Article III to forbid.³⁷

State law today

Twenty-three states adopted limits on their own members of Congress in the early 1990s;⁵ Thornton made all of them unenforceable, though some remain printed in state constitutions — Missouri’s still caps its senators at two terms and its representatives at four.³⁸ Sixteen states limit their state legislators²⁹ and thirty-three set retirement ages for judges;³⁰ the draft touches neither — Section 5 reaches only federal judges.

The day after

Sections 1 and 2 are self-executing: “shall be eligible” applies the day the amendment is ratified, and under Section 3 no term beginning before ratification counts, so the first election the House limit can bar comes roughly six years later and the Senate limit roughly twelve. Ballot access for Congress is state law under Article I, section 4, so states would amend their filing statutes to reject candidates past the cap, and Congress may legislate under the same clause;³⁹ each House could also refuse to seat a person elected in violation.³¹ The dormant state limits stay dormant; Thornton’s bar on state-added qualifications is undisturbed.⁶ Section 4’s eighteen-year term and biennial calendar are self-executing, exempt the justices in office at ratification, and give a vacancy appointee the remainder of the term; a justice’s duties after the term exist only “as Congress shall by law provide”; the existing senior-status statutes³⁴ and the pending bills’ senior-justice mechanics³⁶ are the available templates, and the nine-justice statute stands,³³ including its provision that six justices are a quorum — so a seat left unfilled leaves a Court that is fully able to sit and able to divide evenly. Section 5’s retirement age is self-executing and creates a vacancy in the seat, which Section 4 then fills for the remainder of that seat’s term; Congress may set a lower age for judges below the Supreme Court, and whether a judge past the age may still sit by designation under existing law³⁴ is left to the courts. Section 6 is a self-executing rule that no later change to these limits applies to the people in office when it is made. The text leaves to the courts: whether the counting rules’ year thresholds run from service or from oath, since the text counts terms served rather than elections won; and how a state ballot bar mirroring the article fares under the Court’s Elections Clause cases.⁴⁰

What we left out

What we considered and set aside, and why:

• Twelve-year caps. The earlier draft of this article set six House terms — twelve years per chamber — following two decades of state evidence that very short limits shift power to lobbyists and staff,¹⁰⁴¹⁴² the twelve-year reforms California and Michigan adopted,⁴³ and deliberative polling in which majorities of both parties land near twelve years.¹¹ The article now carries the three-term House limit of the U.S. Term Limits text instead, to match the language with the movement’s investment behind it. The twelve-year evidence stands, and the trade is stated here rather than hidden.
• Applying limits to sitting members and justices. Every version that nearly passed Congress was prospective-only,⁹⁴⁴ and the 22nd Amendment exempted the sitting president.⁴⁵ Counting current officeholders turns a neutral rule into an attack on particular incumbents and forecloses the two-thirds vote. The cost is that these limits spare the people who vote on them; we make that trade knowingly, because it is the trade every version that came close to passing has made.
• A maximum age for Congress. The most-supported idea we have set aside: 80% of Americans back a maximum age for House and Senate candidates, 83% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats.⁴⁶ But every poll on record measures the idea of a cap, not a number — and a number is the whole of what an amendment would say. The two surveys that asked supporters to pick one found no majority for any age.⁴⁷⁴⁸ We hold this until someone asks a named age with a party breakdown; the evidence is at age limits. The judicial half of that category is in the draft above, because it has what the congressional half does not: matching party floors from two pollsters and five state votes on the rule itself.
• Deeming a nominee confirmed. The other way to answer a stalled confirmation is to treat silence as consent after a deadline. That would move the Senate’s default from no to yes — the largest change to advice and consent of any version — and no independent poll has ever asked about it. We took the narrower route in Section 2, which leaves the power to reject untouched and only stops refusal from paying. Nor does the draft extend any default rule to cabinet officers, ambassadors, or the lower federal courts.
• A uniformity clause (declaring these the sole term limits and preserving state election powers) — held back because it is unpolled and its language risks being read against redistricting reform. It can return if formal drafting requires it.
• Statutory Supreme Court term limits. Bills in Congress would impose 18-year terms by ordinary statute.³⁵³⁶ Any such statute would be reviewed by the very justices it limits, under a constitutional clause most commentators read to forbid it.³⁷ An amendment resolves the question outright — which is the reason to do this by amendment.
• Details that belong in statute: the senior-service regime for term-expired justices, confirmation scheduling, and retirement rules for lower federal courts.

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