Twenty-Second Amendment--Presidential Tenure

[[Page 1985]]


                         TWENTY-SECOND AMENDMENT
                               __________

                           PRESIDENTIAL TENURE


  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
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.

                    LIMITATION OF PRESIDENTIAL TERMS

        ``By reason of the lack of a positive expression upon the
subject of the tenure of the office of President, and by reason of a
well-defined custom which has risen in the past that no President should
have more than two terms in that office, much discussion has resulted
upon this subject. Hence it is the purpose of this . . . [proposal]
. . . 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.''\1\

        \1\H.R. Rep. No. 17, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1947).