Term limits
We recently passed a very sad anniversary in American history, as May 22 marked 25 years since a divided U.S. Supreme Court deprived all Americans of the ability to term limit their federal legislators. Term limits were very popular in the 1990s, as they are today (modern polling consistently shows a bipartisan majority support for term limits hovering in the low 80%), but back then the people were actually free to act upon their desires. By the time of this ruling, 23 of the 50 states had passed term limits in some form or another on their lawmakers, a tipping point which ruling elites knew would spell the end of any hopes to remove limits on federal offices ever again.
With the country approaching a return to true self rule, and likely removing corruption through incumbency, a lingering case in Arkansas was used to challenge term limits before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court then tragically and mistakenly ruled in May of 1995 in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton “that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people.” It was with twisted logic that the John Paul Stevens majority declared it would represent the interests of a handful of powerful people to violate not one, but 50 states’ rights, sweeping away all Americans’ rights to what Thomas Jefferson called “rotation of office” with one swing of the gavel. Since this ruling, House incumbency re-election rates returned to 98% in 2016.
Writing for the four-member minority, Justice Clarence Thomas provides the true and enduring measure of this ruling. “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. … 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.”
— Nick McNulty, Windham, N.H.