the.com/term limit
a leash for the powerful, written by people who hope to outlive it.
means a legal restriction on the number of terms or total time a person may serve in a particular elected office.
from A compound of plain English parts: "term," from Latin "terminus" (a boundary or end point, the same root that gave us "terminal" and "terminate"), joined to "limit," from Latin "limes" (a border or boundary path, originally the marked edge between fields). So a "term limit" is doubly about edges — a boundary set on a boundaried stretch of time. The idea is ancient even if the phrase is modern: classical Athens and the Roman Republic rotated offices to keep power from pooling, and the modern American usage crystallized around debates over how long an officeholder should be allowed to stay put.
- roman roots
- Ancient Rome capped consuls at one-year terms
- presidential cap
- 22nd Amendment came only after FDR's four wins
- state split
- Fifteen US states limit their legislators; most don't
- unintended effect
- Power often shifts to unelected staff and lobbyists
- global rarity
- Many leaders simply rewrite constitutions to stay
us presidential term limit — 22nd amendment (1951) restricts us presidents to 2 terms, enacted after fdr's 4 terms
uk prime minister convention — unwritten convention limiting uk pms to roughly 10-13 years, broken by churchill and thatcher