Presidential Succession & Terms · Turning an unwritten norm into a hard constitutional rule
Ratified in 1951, the Twenty-Second Amendment limits a president to two elected terms. For nearly 150 years before that, the two-term limit existed only as an informal tradition, not a legal requirement.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.
Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified 1951
An Unwritten Tradition, Then a Written Rule
George Washington voluntarily stepped down after two terms, and every president who followed honored that precedent as an unwritten norm for nearly a century and a half — until Franklin D. Roosevelt broke it, winning four consecutive elections between 1932 and 1944. Congress proposed this amendment shortly after, converting the informal tradition into a binding constitutional limit.
The limit covers being elected, with a real partial-term nuance
A common misconception is that the amendment simply caps anyone at eight years total in office. The actual rule is more specific: someone who serves more than two years of another president’s term (through succession) can only be elected in their own right once more, not twice — meaning it’s technically possible, in a specific scenario, to serve up to nearly ten years as president without ever violating the amendment’s text.
