Module 35: The Twenty-Second Amendment

Before the Amendment: The Two-Term Custom

For its first 160 years the Constitution had no limit on how many times a President could be elected. The Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified in 1951, wrote one in. To see why, start with the people who left the question open.

The Framers considered the question and chose no limit

The Articles of Confederation had no President at all. Congress held both legislative and executive power, and the Convention of 1787 had to invent the office.¹ Two essays in the National Constitution Center's collection, by Gillian Metzger and F.H. Buckley, describe how the delegates worried over how the President would be chosen and for how long. Both essays report that a proposal for a lifetime appointment failed by a vote of six States to four, and that most delegates did not want term limits as long as Congress chose the President. They report that Gouverneur Morris warned that a President eligible for re-election by Congress would be tempted into "corrupt bargains." The delegates answered that danger by abandoning election by Congress and adopting the Electoral College of Article II. The Constitution that emerged set a four-year term and no limit on re-election.¹

The same essays name different supporters of the lifetime idea. Metzger names Hamilton and Madison. Buckley names Madison's Virginia among the supporting States, with Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, and says Madison's opposition to term limits in 1787 was likely sincere. This lesson relies on the essays for the six-to-four count and does not try to resolve the individual attributions.¹

Washington and the custom he set

George Washington chose to leave office after two terms. The Reagan Library's lesson on the amendment says that his decision "established an unofficial tradition," and Metzger and Buckley write that it "set a convention that lasted for 150 years" while industrial America grew around it. They add that term-limit amendments were proposed in Congress year after year and never adopted, since the custom seemed to work.²¹

Thomas Jefferson put the worry in writing. According to the Wikipedia article on the amendment, which cites his 1807 letter to the Vermont legislature, he warned that without a fixed end to service the office would "become for life." This lesson did not open the letter and gives the quotation at secondhand.³

The custom is tested

The two-term custom was tested but not broken. The Reagan Library's account says that Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson each wished to run for a third term and were not nominated, and that Theodore Roosevelt lost his bid for a nonconsecutive third term in 1912.² The Library of Congress law blog adds details. Wilson received only two votes on the last ballot at the Democratic convention. Grant considered running and declined to pursue the nomination. Theodore Roosevelt had succeeded to the office on William McKinley's death, ran for a second term, initially decided against running for a third in 1908, but then put his hat back in the ring in 1912 and ran as the Progressive Party candidate after losing the Republican nomination.⁴

Franklin Roosevelt

The custom broke in the crisis years. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 as the country struggled with the Great Depression. In 1940, with war spreading abroad, he ran again and won, and in 1944 he won a fourth term. He died in April 1945.² In their essay, Metzger and Buckley treat the war as the kind of exception a custom permits. They note that Britain, in 1940, amended its Parliament Act so that Winston Churchill's government could continue past the five-year limit. They add that the British "returned to their convention" when the war ended, while in America fear that the custom could not be restored led to the amendment.¹

Roosevelt's thirteen years in office, in the Reagan Library's words, "raised serious concerns about executive overreach."² The Constitution Annotated sums up the occasion for the amendment this way: it followed soon after the people had elected Roosevelt to "unprecedented third and fourth terms," in 1940 and 1944.⁵

The Text of the Amendment

"Section 1. 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. 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."

U.S. Const. amend. XXII (National Constitution Center, text)

The National Constitution Center's page dates it: "Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951."⁶

Reading Section 1 one clause at a time

Section 1 is a single long sentence with four parts. Taking them apart helps, because the amendment says less than most people think, and in a few places it says something other than they expect.

• The first clause: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." The verb is "elected." The clause counts elections won, not years served and not terms begun.
• The second clause: a 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" may be elected only once. This clause deals with Vice Presidents and others who take over in mid-term. It sets a threshold of more than two years in the term of someone else.
• The grandfather clause: the article "shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress." That person was Harry Truman, as the section on how the clauses work explains.
• The transition clause: the article does not prevent anyone holding the office, or acting as President, "during the term within which this Article becomes operative" from finishing that term.

Section 2 is the ratification clause. Congress imposed a seven-year deadline on the States, a device first used in the Eighteenth Amendment. Module 6, Amending the Constitution, discusses deadlines in general.

What the text does not say

The amendment says nothing about the Vice President as such, about the Speaker of the House or any other officer who may act as President by statute, or about holding the presidency by some means other than election. It does not say "eligible to hold the office" or "serve as President." The Constitution Annotated points out that an earlier, broader version used language of that kind and that Congress chose to bar only election, which leaves open questions about the Twelfth Amendment that are covered below.⁵

Drafting the Amendment in the 80th Congress

The 1946 midterm elections gave Republicans control of the House and the Senate. The Reagan Library's account says that many of them had campaigned for an amendment limiting presidential tenure, and that the House took it up very soon after the new Congress met.²

House Joint Resolution 27

The Library of Congress law blog reports that the amendment was introduced as House Joint Resolution 27 on the first day of the 80th Congress, January 3, 1947. The House passed it on February 6, 1947 and sent it to the Senate.⁴ The Wikipedia article on the amendment, which cites the roll call, gives the House vote as 285 to 121, with 47 Democrats in favor. This lesson did not locate the roll call itself and gives the count at secondhand.³

The House Report that accompanied the resolution said its purpose was to "submit this question to the people so they, by and through the recognized processes, may express their views upon this question, and if they shall so elect, they may . . . thereby set at rest this problem." The report pointed to "a well-defined custom which has risen in the past that no President should have more than two terms."⁵

What the Senate changed

The text the House passed was stricter than the text that was ratified. As introduced, the resolution would have barred people who had held the office from being "chosen or serve as President" or being "eligible to hold the office," and the House Judiciary Committee's version called the covered former Presidents "ineligible to hold the office of President." That broader language was dropped in favor of a ban on being elected.⁵

The Library of Congress blog reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee rewrote the measure with a different test, based on service of "three hundred and sixty-five calendar days or more in each of two terms." The language that was finally adopted counts elections and uses a two-year threshold for people who take over in mid-term.⁴ According to Wikipedia, the Senate passed the amended proposal 59 to 23 on March 12, 1947, with 16 Democrats in favor. The count is given at secondhand.³ The House then agreed to the Senate's revisions on March 21, 1947, which is the date the National Constitution Center and the Reagan Library give as the date Congress submitted the amendment to the States.⁶²

The Library of Congress blog notes that the amendment came two years after Roosevelt's fourth inauguration. Metzger and Buckley attribute the amendment to two things together: fear that the two-term custom could not be restored, and worry among members of both parties about executive tyranny after the strong Roosevelt presidency. Metzger adds that much of the debate over term limits "is speculative, with little real evidence of their effect."⁴¹

Ratification, 1947 to 1951

Congress sent the amendment to the legislatures on March 21, 1947, and the States took almost four years to finish. The pace is easy to see in the dates, which this lesson takes from the Wikipedia article's ratification list because it did not find a single official list online. Treat the individual State dates as secondhand.³

A fast start and a long pause

Maine and Michigan ratified on March 31, 1947, ten days after submission. By May 23, 1947, when Nebraska acted, eighteen States had ratified. The next ratification, by Virginia, did not come until January 28, 1948. By the end of 1950 only twenty-four States had acted. The remaining twelve needed for the thirty-sixth came in about five weeks of early 1951, in a rush that began with Montana on January 25 and ended with Minnesota on February 27.³

Minnesota completes the count

The thirty-sixth State was Minnesota. The journals of its legislature, which the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library has posted, record the votes. In the Senate, on February 13, 1951, "S. F. No. 15: A Joint Resolution ratifying a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America" passed on a roll call of 39 yeas and 27 nays. In the House, on February 27, 1951, the same resolution passed 80 to 43.⁷⁸ The excerpt this lesson read does not name the amendment in its text. The identification with the Twenty-Second Amendment rests on the file's labeling and on the date, which matches the date Wikipedia gives for Minnesota's ratification.

Wikipedia reports that after Minnesota, five more States ratified: North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Florida and Alabama, the last on May 4, 1951. It adds that Massachusetts and Oklahoma rejected the amendment and that five States took no action.³ A fact sheet on the State ratification debates published by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says forty-one State legislatures ratified between 1947 and 1951, which agrees with the Wikipedia tally of thirty-six plus five.⁹

Certification

The amendment became part of the Constitution when the thirty-sixth State ratified. Wikipedia reports that on March 1, 1951, the Administrator of General Services, Jess Larson, issued a certificate proclaiming it "duly ratified and part of the Constitution," and that ratification came about three years and 343 days after submission, well inside the seven years that Section 2 allowed.³

How the Two Clauses Work

The amendment has been in force since 1951 and, as the Constitution Annotated puts it, it "has yet to be applied" by a court.⁵ Its clauses can still be read against real presidencies.

The first clause: two elections

Under the first clause, nobody may be elected President more than twice. Six presidents since 1951 have been elected twice. According to the Wikipedia article, the amendment has barred Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama from a third term. Two of them, Reagan and Obama, are described in the National Constitution Center essays as having lamented that they could not run again.³¹

The second clause: taking over in mid-term

The second clause reaches a President who did not start the term. A person who has held the office, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected only once. A person who serves two years or less of that term may be elected twice.⁵

The effect is that the longest possible time in the office is just under ten years: close to two years finishing another person's term, then two elected terms of four years each. That figure is this lesson's arithmetic from the text, not a number taken from the sources.

Three examples

• Harry Truman became President on Roosevelt's death in 1945 and won a term in his own right. The Library of Congress blog explains that, without the grandfather clause, he would have been barred from running again because he had served almost all of Roosevelt's last term and been elected once. The clause exempted "any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress," and Truman was holding it in March 1947. Wikipedia reports that he sought the 1952 nomination and withdrew after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary.⁴³
• Lyndon Johnson took office on the death of President Kennedy. The Library of Congress blog notes that Johnson would have been eligible for a third term because he had served less than two years of Kennedy's remaining term. By the text, Johnson could have been elected twice.⁴
• Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in August 1974, when about two and a half years of the term remained. By the amendment's own arithmetic, Ford, who held the office for more than two years of Nixon's term, could be elected only once. He sought election once, in 1976. (The dates in this example are general historical knowledge, and this lesson did not source them from the documents it consulted.)

"Acted as President"

The amendment counts time in which a person "acted as President" as well as time in which one "held" the office. The distinction matters under the statute that sets the line of succession, which includes the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate, who would "act as President" when there is neither a President nor a Vice President. The statute is discussed in the next section, and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment's acting-President provisions are covered in module 38, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment.¹⁰

The Twelfth Amendment Puzzle

The first clause bars a third election. It says nothing about whether a former two-term President could be elected Vice President. This question has been debated for decades and no court has settled it.

Two texts that have to be read together

The Twelfth Amendment ends with a sentence about eligibility: "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."⁵ The Constitution Annotated asks the question directly: is a person barred by the Twenty-Second Amendment from being "elected" to the presidency thereby "constitutionally ineligible to the office"? It notes that the Twenty-Second Amendment, by its terms, "bars only the election of two-term Presidents" and so "would not prevent someone who had twice been elected President from succeeding to the office after having been elected or appointed Vice President." The Constitution Annotated treats the answer as depending on what the Twelfth Amendment means.⁵

The drafting choice, and how scholars divide

Congress made a choice in drafting. Broader language that would have made covered former Presidents "ineligible to hold the office" was rejected in favor of language barring only election.⁵ Wikipedia, citing the scholars named, describes the split this way: some, citing Dan Coenen and Matthew Franck, argue that the two amendments together bar any two-term President from the vice presidency or from succeeding to the presidency. Others, citing Michael Dorf and Bruce Peabody and Scott Gant, argue that the Twelfth Amendment is about qualifications for service while the Twenty-Second is about qualifications for election, so a former two-term President could still be Vice President. The article says the question has never been tested, because no one has been elected President and Vice President in that order.³

The Constitution Annotated points the reader to the fullest treatment of the subject, the 1999 article by Peabody and Gant, "The Twice and Future President: Constitutional Interstices and the Twenty-Second Amendment," 83 Minnesota Law Review 565.⁵ This lesson did not read the article.

Why it matters in practice

The question has moved from the classroom to the news. In March 2025 President Trump, asked about a third term, said "there are methods which you could do it," according to Fox News, and the reporting names one route: Vice President JD Vance would run for President with Trump as his running mate, win, and resign, allowing Trump to succeed him. Fox News adds that most constitutional scholars say this would not work, and it reports that Deborah Pearlstein of Princeton told The Washington Post that the Twelfth Amendment "closes the door."¹¹ In October 2025 Trump, asked about running as Vice President, called it "too cute" and said, "You'd be allowed to do that, but I wouldn't do that," according to the Associated Press.¹²

The two statements are an example of how the open question gets used. One side reads the Twelfth Amendment to forbid the route, as Pearlstein does, and another reads the Twenty-Second as leaving room for it, as Trump's remark suggests. This lesson takes no side. The point for students is that the answer depends on a text that has never been applied.

Succession by Statute and the Speaker

The Constitution lets Congress provide by law for the case where there is neither a President nor a Vice President. The current statute is 3 U.S.C. section 19. The Speaker of the House, "upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress," acts as President, and if there is no Speaker or the Speaker fails to qualify, the President pro tempore of the Senate does the same on resigning from that office and from the Senate. An officer who acts as President "shall continue to act until the expiration of the then current Presidential term," with exceptions for cases that arise from failure to qualify.¹⁰ Module 33, The Twentieth Amendment, covers Section 3 and 4 of that amendment and the history of the statute.

What the Twenty-Second Amendment says about officers who act

Because the Twenty-Second Amendment bars only election to the presidency, the Constitution Annotated observes that neither it nor the Twelfth Amendment "addresses the eligibility of a former two-term President to serve as Speaker of the House or as one of the other officers who could serve as President through operation of the Succession Act."⁵ In other words, whether a former two-term President could become the Speaker, and then act as President after a double vacancy, is a different question from either the vice presidency or a third election, and the text of neither amendment answers it. The annotation sends the reader to the Peabody and Gant article for the analysis.⁵

Why the "acted as President" language matters

An acting President who serves more than two years of someone else's term is, by the second clause, limited to one election. The second clause therefore reaches the same people the Succession Act brings in. A Speaker who acts as President for more than two years of a term could be elected only once under the text, and one who acts for two years or less could be elected twice. No court has applied the amendment to an acting officer.⁵

The Case For and Against the Amendment

Scholars still disagree about whether the Twenty-Second Amendment was a good idea. The National Constitution Center's collection pairs two essays that take different positions, and they show the main arguments in compact form.

Arguments for a constitutional limit

F.H. Buckley, a law professor at George Mason University, argues in favor of term limits on two grounds. First, he argues that the Framers would not have been upset by Roosevelt's four terms alone, and that what changed between 1787 and 1947 was "the enormous growth in the size of government, the concentration of political power in Washington, and within Washington in the presidency." Second, he argues that leaders need a "periodic shake-up." He concedes the price, which is giving up experienced leaders, and says that if given a choice like the one Americans faced in 1940 he would prefer to vote for Roosevelt than for the inexperienced Wendell Willkie. His conclusion is: "I'll go with term limits and political freedom."¹

Arguments for leaving it alone, and against the limit

Gillian Metzger of Columbia Law School is less certain about the limit and more certain about leaving it in place. She writes that "enacting the Twenty-Second Amendment may well have been a mistake, but repealing it now would be worse." Her essay takes up the two common objections. The first is that the limit produces weak lame-duck second terms. She notes that critics point to the number of failed second terms, but she says many things, including errors in the first term, explain them. She also says the amendment removes any chance of a third term and so may embolden Congress when dealing with a lame-duck President, and her example is the Senate Republicans' refusal to hold hearings on President Obama's final-year Supreme Court nominee. The second objection is instability in personnel and policy, and she says that the average two-to-three year duration of agency leadership posts falls well within one presidential term, so that turnover is hard to tie to the amendment.¹

Metzger's reasons for not repealing are practical. The presidency has grown more powerful since 1951, which she describes as "raising the stakes of what an extended presidency might mean", and the amendment turned a custom into a requirement, so that going back to a custom would be "far more difficult." She adds that repeal "would convey a freedom to run for multiple terms that did not exist prior to the Amendment's adoption."¹

Attempts to change it

The Reagan Library's lesson says that "[s]everal attempts have been made by presidents and Congress members of many different political affiliations to either modify or outright repeal" the amendment. Its summary of the arguments for repeal includes consistent leadership in a crisis and non-consecutive terms for presidents with longer life expectancies. It also notes that there is "some controversy about how the Twenty-second Amendment and the Twelfth Amendment interact."²

Wikipedia adds specifics that this lesson has not verified: that President Reagan, days before leaving office in January 1989, said he would push for repeal; that President Clinton, in a November 2000 Rolling Stone interview, suggested limiting presidents to two consecutive terms; that repeal efforts began in 1956, with 54 joint resolutions to repeal introduced over the next fifty years; and that Representative José Serrano introduced nine repeal resolutions between 1997 and 2013, all unsuccessful.³

What it would take

Any change has to follow Article V. Speaker Mike Johnson described the process in October 2025: two-thirds of each house of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the States. He said it "takes about 10 years to do that."¹³ Three-fourths of fifty States is thirty-eight. Johnson's ten-year figure is his estimate and not a legal requirement; the Twenty-Second Amendment itself went from submission to ratification in under four years.¹³³

The 2025 to 2026 Third-Term Debate

This section records what was reported, with sources, as of October 18, 2026. It does not predict what any person will do, and this lesson takes no position on any candidate or party. The Constitution says what it says, and the debate shows how the amendment's text is being discussed in public.

Statements by the President

President Donald Trump, who won a second nonconsecutive term in 2024 according to Wikipedia, has spoken about a third term repeatedly, in different ways. Fox News reports that on March 30, 2025, in an NBC interview, he said he was not "joking" about seeking a third term and that "there are methods which you could do it."¹¹ In late October 2025, on a trip to Asia, he told reporters on Air Force One that he would "love to do it." Pressed on whether he was ruling out a bid, he said, "You'll have to tell me." On October 29 he said: "If you read it, it's pretty clear. I'm not allowed to run. It's too bad." In the same conversation he said, "Based on what I read, I guess I'm not allowed to run. So we'll see what happens."¹³¹²

Fox News reports a further exchange on a Tuesday evening in August 2026, after the Patriot Games in Ohio on August 11, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Asked about 2028, Trump said: "Everybody asks me that question, and you know that the law is very strong on that. I'd love to run, but the law is very strong." Fox also records that at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on July 24, 2026, he said "the third time will be better yet," and then, "I'm only kidding."¹¹

Wikipedia's timeline of the third-term discussion, which this lesson read at secondhand, adds earlier items. It reports that in a May 4, 2025 NBC interview Trump said his goal was to serve two terms and named Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as possible successors, that on August 4, 2025 he said he would "probably not" run for a third term, and that in May 2026 he joked about leaving office "in, let's say, eight or nine years from now." It also reports that "Trump 2028" hats were being sold by April 2025.¹⁴ AP and ABC also mention the hats: AP says hats saying "Trump 2028" are passed out as souvenirs to people visiting the White House, and ABC says the Trump Organization's official merchandise site had been selling them since earlier in 2025.¹²¹³

Statements by others

On October 28, 2025, Speaker Johnson told reporters: "I don't see the path for that." He said he and Trump had "talked about the constrictions of the Constitution," and he added that "we are not going to take our foot off the gas pedal." AP reports that he said Trump "has a good time with that, trolling the Democrats."¹³¹² The same ABC report says that Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, said in an interview with The Economist that there "is a plan" to get Trump a third term, without giving details.¹³

Resolutions in Congress

Congress.gov lists two resolutions in the 119th Congress that bear on the subject, and this lesson read only their titles. H.J.Res. 29 is titled "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide that no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times." H.Res. 171 is titled "Reaffirming the Twenty-second Amendment."¹⁵¹⁶

Wikipedia attributes a January 2025 joint resolution to Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee, to allow a third term for a President whose first two terms were not consecutive, and says Representative Dan Goldman of New York was reported on February 27, 2025 to be planning a resolution affirming the amendment.¹⁴ This lesson could not confirm from Congress.gov the sponsor, the introduction date or the committee status of either resolution, or that the Ogles resolution is H.J.Res. 29 (its title there speaks of "three times," while Wikipedia describes a nonconsecutive-terms rule). The Wikipedia article reports no floor or committee action on either. A joint resolution proposing an amendment needs a two-thirds vote in each house and ratification by thirty-eight States, as the previous section noted.

A state bill

Wikipedia reports that on January 15, 2026, California State Senator Tom Umberg introduced a bill to keep Trump off the 2028 ballot as a preemptive measure. This lesson did not read the bill or any reporting on it.¹⁴ Whether a State may use its ballot rules to enforce the Twenty-Second Amendment against a federal candidate has not been decided, and the section on who enforces the amendment explains why the answer is not obvious.

What a student should take from this record

• The text of the amendment has not changed, and the President has said more than once that it bars him. He has also joked and kept the topic open, and the reporting records both.
• The open legal question is narrower than the political talk. It concerns routes other than a third election, such as the vice presidency and succession, which earlier sections of this lesson discuss.
• The next presidential election is in November 2028. This lesson gives no estimate of what will happen before then.

Who Would Enforce the Amendment?

No court has applied the Twenty-Second Amendment, so there is no case that says who may enforce it or how. The Constitution Annotated says it "has yet to be applied."⁵ The cases that come closest involve other provisions, and each shows a possible route or a limit. None decides the question.

Trump v. Anderson (2024)

In Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100 (March 4, 2024), the Court considered whether Colorado could keep former President Trump off its primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The per curiam opinion held that "responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States," and it said all nine Justices agreed with that result. It warned of "chaos" if enforcement of Section 3 were attempted by different States at different times, up to and perhaps beyond Inauguration Day.¹⁷ The case concerned Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Court did not say how it would treat the Twenty-Second Amendment. A court asked about the Twenty-Second would have to decide whether its reasoning carries over. This lesson takes no view on that.

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995)

In Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (May 22, 1995), the Court held that Arkansas could not keep a candidate for Congress off the ballot because the candidate had served three terms in the House or two in the Senate. The Court reasoned that the qualifications the Constitution lists for Congress are fixed and that neither Congress nor a State may add to them, and it rejected the argument that a ballot-access rule is different from a disqualification.¹⁸ The case concerns congressional qualifications. Its relevance here is by comparison: the limit on the President was adopted the constitutional way, by amendment.

Chiafalo v. Washington (2020)

In Chiafalo, 591 U.S. 578 (July 6, 2020), the Court held that a State may enforce an elector's pledge to support the party's nominee for President. The Court said Article II, Section 1 gives States the broadest power of determination over who becomes an elector and that the power to appoint includes the power to condition the appointment.¹⁹ That is a ruling about electors and says nothing about candidates.

Congress counts the votes

Congress counts electoral votes under the Twelfth Amendment and under 3 U.S.C. section 15. The statute allows an objection to be made in writing on one of the listed grounds, which include that "[t]he vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given." Whether an objection that a candidate was barred by the Twenty-Second Amendment would fit one of those grounds has not been decided, and this lesson found no authority on it.²⁰

The honest summary is that the text is clear on the first clause, that the later clauses and the Twelfth Amendment question are open, and that the machinery for enforcing any of it has never been tested. A citizen who reads the news about the amendment should be wary of confident predictions in either direction.

Myths and Misreadings

Questions Students Ask

Could Congress pass a statute allowing a third term?

No. The limit is in the Constitution, and a statute cannot override the Constitution. Only an amendment under Article V could change it, as Speaker Johnson said in 2025.¹³

Could a State decide for itself to ignore the limit and put a third-term candidate on its ballot?

The Constitution Annotated reports that no court has applied the amendment, and this lesson found no authority on a State's power to put on or keep off its ballot someone the amendment bars. Anderson says States cannot enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against federal candidates, but it was about a different provision.⁵¹⁷

Does the amendment apply to the Vice President?

It applies to election to the presidency. A Vice President who becomes President is covered by the second clause according to the time served, and whether a former two-term President can be elected Vice President depends on the Twelfth Amendment, as the section on that question explains.⁵

Why does the amendment say "elected"?

The language that would have barred "serv[ing]" or being "eligible to hold the office" was rejected in drafting, as the Constitution Annotated records.⁵

Has the Twenty-Second Amendment ever been repealed or changed?

No. Proposals have been introduced, and Wikipedia counts dozens, but none has passed Congress.³

Landmark Cases

No court has applied the Twenty-Second Amendment, so there is no case that interprets it.⁵ The table lists the decisions that come closest, each about a different provision. The footnotes show which were read in the Court's own text. They are listed in date order.

The Idaho Connection

Idaho ratified in January 1951

The Idaho Legislature ratified the Twenty-Second Amendment in its 1951 session by Senate Joint Resolution No. 1. The session law reproduces the proposed article and ends: "Passed by the Senate January 24, 1951. Passed by the House January 30, 1951."²¹ The date of House passage is the date Wikipedia gives for Idaho's ratification, and its list places Idaho 27th of the States to ratify, between Indiana (January 29) and New Mexico (February 12).³

The vote counts come from a fact sheet by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog, which this lesson read but could not check against the legislative journals. The fact sheet reports that the resolution passed the Senate on January 24 by 27 to 14, with three members excused, and the House on January 30 by 39 to 19. It says the same measure was introduced in 1949 but failed in the Senate, then controlled by the other party, and that three House Democrats, Herman McDevitt, Joseph Kaschmitter and Minority Leader Arthur Murphy, joined the Republican majority to support it in 1951.⁹

The ratification came a month before the thirty-sixth State, Minnesota, completed the count on February 27, 1951. Idaho's vote therefore came while the outcome was still in doubt.³

Idaho's Constitution and the length of executive service

The Twenty-Second Amendment does not govern State offices. Idaho's own constitution sets the term of its executive officers: Article IV, Section 1 provides that the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state controller, state treasurer, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction "shall hold his office for four years" beginning on the first Monday in January after the election.²² The section as quoted states four-year terms and does not state a limit on re-election. This lesson did not search the rest of the Idaho Constitution or the Idaho Code for a term limit on any office, and a reader who needs to know whether one exists should check the Legislature's site.

Presidential electors under Idaho Code

Idaho's statutes on presidential elections are in Title 34, Chapter 15. Section 34-1502 provides for "an election held in this state for the election of such electors, at the times appointed by any law of the Congress or the Constitution of the United States." Under section 34-1503, the electors "meet at the seat of government of this state" at noon on the day directed by Congress "and then and there perform the duties enjoined upon them by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Section 34-1501 directs the secretary of state to prepare certificates of election for the electors, signed by the governor, and to deliver them by the second Wednesday in December.²³²⁴²⁵ None of those sections mentions the Twenty-Second Amendment, and this lesson did not review the rest of Title 34 for provisions on ballot access for presidential candidates.

Idaho cases

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington fact sheet says that there are no relevant cases in Idaho that analyze the requirements of the Twenty-Second Amendment.⁹ This lesson did not find one either, and its search of Idaho decisions was limited. Treat the absence as unconfirmed.

Where This Shows Up for Officials, Reporters and Citizens

The reporter writing about a third term

Quote the text and attribute each statement to the person who made it, with the date. "Bars a third term" is shorthand. The amendment bars a third election, and the routes other than election, such as the vice presidency, are open questions. Distinguish between a resolution that has been introduced and one that has passed a committee or a house, and check the status on Congress.gov, because this lesson could not read it. A joke and a legal position are different, and the record in this lesson includes both from the same speaker.¹¹¹²

The county clerk or election official asked about a candidate's eligibility

The question may reach a local office in the form of a complaint or a request. The cases above show that the Supreme Court has been wary of state-by-state decisions about presidential candidates' qualifications, and the Court has not said how that applies to the Twenty-Second Amendment. An official who is asked should route the question to the county's legal counsel or the Secretary of State and should not decide it alone. This is a general civic point and not legal advice.¹⁷

The citizen at a public meeting who wants a change in the rule

The path is Article V. It needs a two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate and ratification by thirty-eight State legislatures or conventions. A citizen can ask a legislator how Idaho would vote,, since the Idaho Legislature ratified the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951 by a joint resolution.²¹¹³

The teacher or student

Ask what each clause counts. The first counts elections. The second counts time served in someone else's term. The grandfather clause exempted one person. Then ask which questions the text leaves open and why. That is the habit of reading the text before the commentary.

The campaign volunteer or neighbor who hears claims about 2028

The statement on the record from the President is that the amendment bars him from running. The same record includes jokes and a question about the vice presidency, and the legal questions are open for routes other than election. A neighbor repeating a claim that a route "is allowed" or "is barred" should be asked for the text and the source.¹²¹¹

Related Modules

Module 3, Article II: The President (the office, the Electoral College and eligibility); Module 6, Amending the Constitution (Article V and deadlines); Module 26, The Twelfth Amendment (the vice presidency and eligibility); Module 28, The Fourteenth Amendment (Section 3 and Trump v. Anderson); Module 33, The Twentieth Amendment (terms and succession); Module 36, The Twenty-Third Amendment (electors for the District of Columbia); and Module 38, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment (disability and succession).

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27 (Amendments XII and XXII)
• National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXII: Overview
• 3 U.S.C. section 19, Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President
• 3 U.S.C. section 15, Counting electoral votes in Congress
• Idaho Session Laws (1951), S.J.R. No. 1, pp. 657-658
• Idaho Constitution, Article IV, Section 1
• Idaho Code, Title 34, Chapter 15 (Presidential Electors)
• Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, ratifications of U.S. constitutional amendments (journal pages)

Supreme Court and Federal Opinions

• Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100 (2024)
• U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)
• Cook v. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510 (2001)
• Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. 578 (2020)
• Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twenty-Second Amendment (Metzger and Buckley)
• National Constitution Center, 22nd Amendment
• Reagan Library, Amendment 22: Term Limits for the Presidency
• Library of Congress, In Custodia Legis: Ratification Anniversary
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, States' ratification of the 22nd Amendment: Idaho
• AP via PBS News, Trump says it's too bad he can't run for a third term (Oct. 29, 2025)
• ABC News, Speaker Johnson says no path for a 3rd Trump term (Oct. 28, 2025)
• Fox News, Trump says the law blocks him from running for a third term in 2028
• Wikipedia, Twenty-second Amendment (secondhand items flagged in the text)
• Wikipedia, Donald Trump third term proposal (secondhand items flagged in the text)

Footnotes

1. Gillian Metzger, "Twenty-Second Amendment: Let It Be," F.H. Buckley, "Term Limits, Constitutional and Natural," and their joint "Common Interpretation," in National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twenty-Second Amendment, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxii/interpretations/149. Source for the Convention history, the six-to-four vote, the Washington custom, the arguments for and against, and the quoted passages.
2. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, "Constitutional Amendments, Amendment 22: Term Limits for the Presidency," https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/education/lesson-plans/high-school/constitutional-amendments/constitutional-amendments-amendment-22. Source for the Washington tradition, the Grant, Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt episodes, Franklin Roosevelt's four elections and the 1946 midterms.
3. Wikipedia, "Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. Used at secondhand, through a summary of the article, for the House vote of 285 to 121, the Senate vote of 59 to 23 and the dates, the State ratification list, the certificate of March 1, 1951, the Reagan, Clinton and Serrano items, the Twelfth Amendment scholars and the Truman 1952 item. This lesson did not locate the roll calls or the original sources.
4. Library of Congress, In Custodia Legis, "Ratification Anniversary," https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/02/ratification-anniversary. Source for the introduction of H.J. Res. 27 on January 3, 1947, House passage on February 6, 1947, the Senate Judiciary Committee language, and the Truman and Johnson examples. The blog's summary of the final text as a ten-year limit is not relied on.
5. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXII, "Overview of Twenty-Second Amendment, Presidential Term Limits" (Cornell LII edition), https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-22/overview-of-twenty-second-amendment-presidential-term-limits. Source for the text, the 1947 House Report quotation, the statement that the amendment "has yet to be applied," the rejected broader language of H.J. Res. 27, the Twelfth Amendment question and the reference to Peabody and Gant, 83 Minn. L. Rev. 565 (1999).
6. National Constitution Center, 22nd Amendment: Two-Term Limit on Presidency, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxii. Text of the amendment and the dates "Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951."
7. Minnesota Senate Journal, February 13, 1951, p. 345 (S.F. No. 15), posted by the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, https://www.lrl.mn.gov/history/usconamd. The roll call is 39 yeas and 27 nays.
8. Minnesota House Journal, February 27, 1951, p. 651 (S.F. No. 15), posted by the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, https://www.lrl.mn.gov/history/usconamd. The roll call is 80 yeas and 43 nays.
9. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, "States' ratification of the 22nd Amendment: Idaho," https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/22A-Factsheets_Idaho.pdf. A watchdog nonprofit's fact sheet. Source for the Idaho vote counts of 27 to 14 and 39 to 19, the 1949 failure, the three House Democrats, the figure of forty-one State legislatures, and the statement that no Idaho cases analyze the amendment. Not checked against the Idaho legislative journals.
10. 3 U.S.C. section 19, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/19.
11. Fox News, "Trump says the law blocks him from running for a third term in 2028," https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-brushes-off-reporter-question-running-third-term-2028-law-very-strong. The page refers to events on August 11, 2026 and July 24, 2026 and does not show its own publication date in the text this lesson read. Its account of the Pearlstein statement is secondhand from The Washington Post.
12. Chris Megerian and Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press, "Trump says 'it's too bad' he can't run for a third term," PBS News (Oct. 29, 2025), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-its-too-bad-he-cant-run-for-a-third-term.
13. Lauren Peller, "Speaker Johnson says no 'path' for a 3rd Trump term," ABC News (Oct. 28, 2025), https://abcnews.com/Politics/speaker-johnson-path-3rd-trump-term/story?id=126941927.
14. Wikipedia, "Donald Trump third term proposal," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_third_term_proposal. Used at secondhand, through a summary of the article's dated timeline, for the Ogles resolution, the Goldman resolution, the 2025 NBC interviews, the hats, the August 2025 and May 2026 remarks and the California bill. This lesson did not open the articles the timeline cites.
15. Congress.gov, H.J.Res.29, 119th Congress, https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-joint-resolution/29. Only the title, as listed in a search result, was read; the page itself could not be fetched.
16. Congress.gov, H.Res.171, 119th Congress, "Reaffirming the Twenty-second Amendment," https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/171/text/ih?overview=closed&format=xml. Only the title, as listed in a search result, was read.
17. Trump v. Anderson, No. 23-719, 601 U.S. 100 (Mar. 4, 2024) (per curiam), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/23-719.
18. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), syllabus, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/93-1456. Only the syllabus was read.
19. Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U.S. 578 (2020), syllabus, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-465_i425.pdf. Only the syllabus was read; the link is to the Court's slip opinion.
20. 3 U.S.C. section 15, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15.
21. Idaho Session Laws (1951), pp. 657-658, S.J.R. No. 1, https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessionlaws/sessionlaws_1951.pdf. The page ends "Passed by the Senate January 24, 1951. Passed by the House January 30, 1951."
22. Idaho Constitution, art. IV, sec. 1, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIV/Sect1/.
23. Idaho Code section 34-1501, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title34/T34CH15/SECT34-1501/.
24. Idaho Code section 34-1502, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title34/T34CH15/SECT34-1502/.
25. Idaho Code section 34-1503, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title34/T34CH15/SECT34-1503/.