Twenty-Second Amendment: Doctrine and Practice

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.

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.

Footnotes 1 H.J. Res. 27, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947) (as introduced). As the House Judiciary Committee reported the measure, it would have made the covered category of former presidents “ineligible to hold the office of President.” H.R. Rep. No. 17 , 80th Cong., 1st Sess. at 1 (1947) . 2 3 U.S.C. § 19 . For analysis of the Twenty-Second Amendment and its applicability to the various scenarios under which a person can succeed to the office, see Bruce G. Peabody and Scott E. Gant , The Twice and Future President: Constitutional Interstices and the Twenty-Second Amendment , 83 Minn. L. Rev. 565 (1999) .

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