RULING ON TERM LIMITS : In the Words of the Court

Here are excerpts from the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision barring states from imposing term limits on members of Congress:

From Justice John Paul Stevens’ majority opinion:

Today’s case presents a challenge to an amendment to the Arkansas State Constitution that prohibits the name of an otherwise-eligible candidate for Congress from appearing on the general election ballot if that candidate has already served three terms in the House of Representatives or two terms in the Senate.

Such a state-imposed restriction is contrary to the fundamental principle of our representative democracy, embodied in the Constitution, that the people should choose whom they please to govern them.

Allowing individual states to adopt their own qualifications for congressional service would be inconsistent with the framers’ vision of a uniform National Legislature representing the people of the United States.

If the qualifications set forth in the text of the Constitution are to be changed, that text must be amended.

The power to add qualifications is not part of the original powers of sovereignty that the 10th Amendment reserved to the states.

In short, as the framers recognized, electing representatives to the National Legislature was a new right, arising from the Constitution itself . . . .

Similarly, we believe that state-imposed qualifications, as much as congressionally imposed qualifications, would undermine . . . that an aspect of sovereignty is the right of the people to vote for whom they wish . . . .

Petitioners argue that, even if states may not add qualifications (the Arkansas measure) is constitutional because it is not such a qualification, and because (the measure) is a permissible exercise of state power to regulate the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” We reject these contentions . . . .

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From Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s concurring opinion:

The framers split the atom of sovereignty. It was the genius of their idea that our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.

There can be no doubt, if we are to respect the republican origins of the nation and preserve its federal character, that there exists a federal right to citizenship, a relationship between the people of the nation and their national government, with which the states may not interfere.

Because the Arkansas enactment intrudes upon this federal domain, it exceeds the boundaries of the Constitution.

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From Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissenting opinion:

It is ironic that the court bases today’s decision on the right of the people to “choose whom they please to govern them.” Under our Constitution, there is only one state whose people have the right to “choose whom they please” to represent Arkansas in Congress.

The court holds, however, that neither the elected legislature of that state nor the people themselves acting by ballot initiative may prescribe any qualifications for those representatives.

The majority therefore defends the right of the people of Arkansas to “choose whom they please to govern them” by invalidating a provision that won nearly 60% of the votes cast in a direct election and that carried every congressional district in the state.

Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each state of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the states or the people.