Congressional Term Limits
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The issue of term limits for members of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives has become an issue of near overriding interest in the 1990s (Kristol, 1993, pp. 95-100). Many people who believe that term limitations for members of Congress are desirable pursue efforts to achieve that objective on the basis of arguments supporting the concept as opposed to addressing the constitutional issues involved in the actual limiting of congressional terms (Will, 1994, p. E2). This research addresses the constitutional issues involved in efforts to limit congressional terms of office through actions taken at the state level of government. What the Constitution Says and Does Not Say About Congressional Term Limitations Article I, Section 2.1. of the Constitution states that the members of the House of Representatives will "be chosen every second year by the people of the several States" (Constitution, I, 2.1). The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution states that the members of the United States Senate will be elected by the people for six years (Constitution, Amendments, Article XVII). No where in the Constitution or in the amendments to that document are any limitations placed on the number of terms in office that may be served by a single individual as either a United States Senator or as a member of the United States House of Representatives. Article V of the Constitution establishes a mechanism for amending the
. . .
ts
Several states have enacted term limitation statutes (Idleson, 1994, pp. 2802-2806). Where these laws have applied to state level offices, they have been upheld by the courts. Where the laws have applied to congressional offices, the statutes have been rejected by the lower courts. The Arkansas Supreme Court found a term limits statute in that state that applied to congressional offices to be unconstitutional (Hook, 1994, p. 1679). This ruling was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal during the term that began in September 1994 (Coyle, 1994, p. A1).
In 1992, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the California Supreme Court that upheld a term limits initiative approved in that state ("Supreme Court . . . " 1992, p. 654). Supporters of term limits for members of Congress frequently cite this ruling as an indication that the United States Supreme Court will overturn the ruling of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The term limits supporters who make this contention, however, overlook the fact that the California term limits initiative applied only to state level offices. Therefore, a comparison of the Arkansas and California term
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
House Representatives, Term Limits, Senators Representatives, Supreme Court, Republicans Polsby, Constitution Article, term limits, Public Policy, Weekly Report, XVII Constitution, Coyle Marcia, supreme court, term limitations, congressional term, house representatives, congressional terms, congress institution, united supreme court, united house, united supreme, united senate, united house representatives, congressional term limits, senate united house, representative democracy united,
Approximate Word count = 1553
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
