Let’s start off by analyzing the issue of whether or not the idea of term limits in congress is constitutional. As of a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision, U.S. Term Limits, Inc v. Thornton, it was declared that term limits imposed on United States Congressmen is unconstitutional. In the 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Paul Stevens declared:
“Finally, state-imposed restrictions, unlike the congressionally imposed restrictions at issue in Powell, violate a third idea central to this basic principle: that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people. ... Following the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913, this ideal was extended to elections for the Senate. The Congress of the United States, therefore, is not a confederation of nations in which separate sovereigns are represented by appointed delegates, but is instead a body composed of representatives of the people.”
Arkansas’s state legislature passed a law limiting their U.S. representatives to a certain amount of terms and this decision overturned it.
This decision, like many other decisions, wasn’t ruled on whether the act itself is correct, but rather how it was delivered to the court. Delegates from the state cannot rule to impose term limits on the representatives from the state to the U.S. Congress. Meaning that only the U.S. Congress can impose term limits on themselves. Should people elect representatives in favor of term limits it could be rule constitutional because the state governments are controlling U.S. representatives, the people would.
Opponents of this ruling cite the 10th Amendment which basically says that if the constitution doesn’t address it as a power of the national government and it doesn’t say that states cannot do it, then the states have the right to rule on it. What this would undoubtedly lead to is a Supreme Court decision in favor of the Necessary and Proper Clause, which basically says the National Government can do whatever it wants in order to carry out its duty. (See the McCulloch v. Maryland for Necessary and Proper Clause under Chief Justice John Marshall).
So, the simplest way to pass term limits is to elect representatives that are willing to pass, even if very weak, term limits. That way the people would have spoken directly on the national level. If opponents tried to use the Necessary and Proper Clause on self imposed term limits because the people’s voice can overrule and supersede national government. The people chose to impose terms on the presidential terms when it was rule that someone can only serve president for two full terms.
George Mason once said, “nothing can be so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation (of its members)."
