Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives and Proposals for Change Updated April 15, 2019 Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov R40864 Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives and Proposals for Change Summary The President and Vice President’s terms of office are prescribed by the Constitution and four of its amendments. Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution, which came into effect with the convening of the First Congress and inauguration of the first President and Vice President in 1789, sets the terms of these two officers at four years, and does not prohibit their reelection. Four amendments to the Constitution, ratified between 1804 and 1967, have added further conditions to presidential terms and tenure. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, extended the qualifications for Presidents to the vice presidency. Section 1 of the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, sets the expiration date for these terms at noon on January 20 of each year following a presidential election. The Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidential tenure: no person may be elected President more than twice. It also specifies that Vice Presidents who succeed to the office may be elected to two full terms if they served less than two years of the term of the President they succeeded. If they served more than two years of the predecessor’s term, they are eligible for election to only one additional term. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, does not directly affect terms and tenure of the President and Vice President, but provides in Section 1 that the Vice President “shall become President” on the death, resignation, or removal from office of the President. This section clarifies original constitutional language on the status of a Vice President who succeeds to the presidency. Section 2 authorizes the President to make nominations to fill vacancies in the office of Vice President, subject to approval by a majority vote of both houses of Congress, a contingency not covered in the original language of the Constitution. The length of the President’s term and the question of whether Presidents should be eligible for reelection were extensively debated in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. Late in the proceedings, the delegates settled on a four-year term for both President and Vice President but did not place a limit on the number of terms a President could serve. Following a precedent set by President George Washington (1789-1797), and reinforced by Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), however, U.S. Presidents adhered to a self-imposed limit of two terms, a precedent that was observed for over 140 years. Although several Presidents during this period who had served two terms considered running for a third, Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945) was the first to seek and be elected to both a third term, in 1940, and a fourth, in 1944. Following ratification of the four amendments cited above, additional amendment proposals to change the conditions of presidential terms and tenure were regularly introduced during the second half of the 20th century, but much less frequently to date in the 21st. Two categories of amendment predominated during this period: one variant proposed repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment, thus permitting Presidents to be elected an unlimited number of times. Another category of proposed amendment would have extended the presidential and vice-presidential terms to six years, often in combination with a requirement limiting Presidents to one term. No measure to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment or otherwise change the presidential term of office has been introduced to date in the 116th Congress. This report will be updated if events warrant. Congressional Research Service Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives and Proposals for Change Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Presidential Term of Office: Current Provisions and Options for Change ...................................... 1 Current Provisions in Brief ....................................................................................................... 2 Contemporary Options for Change ........................................................................................... 2 A Single Six-Year Term for the President and Vice President .................................................. 2 For and Against ................................................................................................................... 3 History of Congressional Activity ...................................................................................... 4 Repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment ............................................................................... 5 For and Against ................................................................................................................... 7 History of Congressional Activity ...................................................................................... 8 Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives................................................................................... 8 The Philadelphia Convention: Debate and Decisions on Terms and Tenure............................. 9 Vice Presidential Vacancies: A Constitutional Oversight? ................................................. 11 Historical Patterns in Presidential Tenure ............................................................................... 12 Presidential Tenure, 1789-1825: The Era of the Founders ................................................ 12 Presidential Tenure, 1825-1901: Decline of the Two-Term Presidency ............................ 14 Tenure in the Early 20th Century ....................................................................................... 16 Breaking With Tradition: A Third and Fourth Term for President Franklin D. Roosevelt .................................................................................................... 18 The Twenty-Second Amendment and After: Presidential Tenure Since President Franklin Roosevelt ............................................................................................................... 19 Constitutional Amendments Affecting Presidential and Vice Presidential Tenure.................. 20 The Twentieth Amendment: Beginning Presidential Terms on January 20 ...................... 20 The Twenty-Second Amendment: “Term Limits” for the President ................................. 22 The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Filling Vice Presidential Vacancies ................................ 26 Concluding Observations .............................................................................................................. 31 Contacts Author Information ........................................................................................................................ 31 Congressional Research Service Presidential Terms and Tenure: Perspectives and Proposals for Change Introduction The issue of the President and Vice President’s term of office is generally regarded as an accepted constitutional norm that arouses little controversy in the 21st century. Both the four-year term and the venerable two-term tradition, initiated by George Washington and ultimately incorporated in the Constitution in 1951 by the Twenty-Second Amendment, appear to be fixed elements in the nation’s political landscape. In marked comparison, the issues of tenure and reelection of the President, and of the Vice President (an office added almost as an afterthought during the Constitutional Convention of 1787), were the subject of intense and prolonged debate during the Philadelphia gathering. Delegates argued for three months over the length of the presidential term and whether the chief executive should be eligible for reelection before reaching a compromise package of provisions—a four-year term, and eligibility for reelection—several days before the convention adjourned. Since that time, a wide range of changes to these conditions has been proposed as constitutional amendments, but relatively few conditions have been added to the original provisions governing the President’s term of office. In addition to the Twenty-Second Amendment cited above, the Twelfth, ratified in 1804, set the same qualifications for the Vice President; the Twentieth, ratified in 1933, set January 20 of every year following a presidential election as the date on which the chief executive’s term begins; and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment clarified the question of vice- presidential succession to the presidency and authorized the President to nominate persons to fill vacancies in the vice presidency, subject to approval by vote of both houses of Congress. Proposals for a single term were popular in the 19th century, and for several decades before the Civil War, the concept of a voluntary limit of one presidential term in office drew wide support. Beginning in 1808, constitutional amendments were introduced that would have changed the presidential term to five, six, seven, and even eight years. By the 20th century, the single six-year term for Presidents had become a preferred option for such amendments, with multiple amendment proposals introduced in successive Congresses as late as the 1990s, while amendments to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment to allow unlimited reelection were regularly introduced as recently as the 113th Congress. In the past two decades, however,