The Twenty-second Amendment

On March 4, 1797, George Washington voluntarily stepped down as president after serving two four-year terms.

Washington’s decision to limit himself to two terms became an unwritten rule for American presidents for more than a century, until President Franklin D. Roosevelt, rejected the long-held tradition.

Roosevelt, a Democrat, was elected president four times, but died during his fourth term in April 1945. Shortly thereafter, in the 80th Congress, Earl C. Michener, a Republican Representative from Michigan proposed what would become the 22nd constitutional amendment. It officially limits presidents to two terms in office.

The Twenty-second Amendment states:

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.

In 1947, Congress passed the amendment, and four years later, on February 27, 1951, the amendment was ratified. The 22nd Amendment reflected the vision of America’s first president, who wanted to show that the new American government belonged to the people.

“Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections,” Washington said in his farewell address. “The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”