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Congress
Reformers during the early 1990s used the initiative and referendum to put congressional term limits on the ballot in 24 states. Voters in eight of these states approved the congressional term limits by an average electoral margin of two to one.[22] In the elections of 1994, part of the Republican platform was to pass legislation setting term limits in Congress. After winning the majority, they brought a constitutional amendment to the House floor.
It limited members of the Senate to two six-year terms and members of the House to six two-year terms. Because the Republicans held 230 seats in the House, they were able to get a simple majority. However, constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, or 290 votes, and the votes to restrict term limits in Congress fell short of that number.
In May 1995, the United States Supreme Court [23] 5-4 in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995) that states cannot impose term limits upon their federal Representatives or Senators.
Earlier that Spring, the U.S. Congress had given the Court assurance that the Justices would be acting only against state statutes, not overturning an act of Congress.[clarification needed] For the hopes of some that Congress would self-impose term limits had abruptly come to an end. Congressional term limits had been featured prominently in the Republican Party's Contract with America in the 1994 election campaign, and may well have contributed to the Republican Revolution, as the Republicans wrested control of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party for the first time since the 1952 elections. The Republican leadership brought to the floor of the House a constitutional amendment that would limit House members to six two-year terms and members of the U.S. Senate to two six-year terms. However, this rate of rotation was so slow (the life-tenured Supreme Court averages in the vicinity of twelve years) that the congressional version of term-limits garnered little support among the populist backers of term limits, including U.S. Term Limits, the largest private organization pushing for Congressional term limits. (U.S. Term Limits wanted House members to be limited to three two-year terms.) With the Republicans holding 230 seats in the House, three versions of the amendment got well under 200 votes, while the 12 year term-limits which overrode all the more stringent state measures managed a bare majority in the House of 227-204,[24] well short of the requisite two-thirds majority (290 votes) required to pass a constitutional amendment. Defeated in Congress and overridden by the Supreme Court, this populist uprising was brought to a halt for the purpose of reforming the federal government. The term limits intended simultaneously to reform legislatures (as distinguished from the congressional delegations) remain in force, however, in fifteen states.[25]
In 2007, Professor Larry J. Sabato revived the debate over term limits by arguing in A More Perfect Constitution that the success and popularity of term limits at the state level suggests that they should be adopted at the federal level as well. He specifically put forth the idea of congressional term limits and suggested a national constitutional convention be used to accomplish the amendment, since the Congress would be unlikely to propose and adopt any amendment that limits its own power.
