The framers kept qualifications for federal office short and specific, wanting the people to have wide freedom to choose their leaders. Debates over who can serve, and for how long, have continued ever since, from the two-term tradition set by George Washington to modern proposals for congressional term limits, age limits, and fixed terms for Supreme Court justices.
This guide sets out the constitutional requirements for each office, the limits on terms, the rules for disqualification, and the arguments over change.
Article I requires House members to be at least 25 years old, U.S. citizens for seven years, and inhabitants of the state they represent when elected, though not of the district. Senators must be at least 30, citizens for nine years, and inhabitants of their state. In Powell v. McCormack in 1969, the Supreme Court held that the House cannot exclude a member-elect who meets these qualifications, though each chamber may expel a sitting member by a two-thirds vote. Members serve two-year and six-year terms with no limit on reelection.
Article II requires the President to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the United States for 14 years. The natural-born requirement has prompted debate over candidates born abroad to American parents, though most scholars believe they qualify. The 12th Amendment applies the same qualifications to the Vice President. There is no maximum age for any federal office, though the ages of recent presidential candidates prompted proposals for cognitive tests or age limits.
Most states limit governors to two consecutive terms, and 16 states limit the terms of state legislators, mostly through ballot initiatives in the 1990s, though some states later repealed or loosened them. Supporters of term limits say they bring in new people, reduce the power of incumbency and lobbyists, and curb careerism. Critics say they remove experienced lawmakers, shift power to staff, lobbyists, and the executive branch, and take choices away from voters, pointing to research on states with legislative term limits.
In the early 1990s, 23 states imposed term limits on their members of Congress, but in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton in 1995, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that states cannot add qualifications beyond those in the Constitution. Proposed constitutional amendments to limit congressional terms have been introduced repeatedly but have not passed. Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, serve during good behavior, effectively for life, and proposals for 18-year staggered terms for justices have drawn interest from scholars across the spectrum and from some members of Congress.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, bars from office anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection, unless Congress removes the disability by a two-thirds vote. In 2023 Colorado's supreme court ruled that a presidential candidate was disqualified under the section, but in Trump v. Anderson in March 2024 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that states cannot enforce Section 3 against federal candidates and that Congress must provide the means. Impeachment can also include disqualification from future federal office.
George Washington set the two-term tradition, which held until Franklin Roosevelt won a third term in 1940 and a fourth in 1944. In response, Congress proposed the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, which bars anyone from being elected President more than twice and limits someone who serves more than two years of another President's term to one election. Scholars debate whether a two-term President could become President through succession, but most agree the amendment bars a third election. Talk in 2025 of a possible third term for the incumbent drew wide agreement among legal scholars that the amendment forbids it.
See every office and title in who's who: offices and titles, learn how judges reach the bench in how federal judges are chosen, or follow the presidential race in the presidential election, start to finish.