It seems that every time Strom Thurmond, South Carolina's 97-year-old senator, is mentioned in the news, people ask themselves two things. First, how can a man who ran for President in 1948, as a member of the States' Rights Party, still be alive, much less serving in Congress? Second, shouldn't there be a law preventing politicians from staying in office indefinitely? We're not even gonna attempt to tackle the first question; it boggles our minds as well. (One word: cryogenics.) Instead we're going to focus on the second, only slightly easier question, regarding the issue of term limits, a major subject of debate in America today.

1. LEARN SOME BACKGROUND ON THE ISSUE

Term limits on executive offices are fairly common. The President is limited to two terms, a precedent set by George Washington but not put into law until after Franklin Roosevelt's marathon of four consecutive terms (he died at the beginning of the fourth) in the '30s and '40s. Thirty-eight states have limits on the number of terms that their governors can serve, usually to two or three four-year terms. While a few of these limits were put into law recently, gubernatorial term limits have been common for over a hundred years.

Most of the debate now is over legislative term limits. Eighteen states limit the number of terms that state legislators may serve. Like with governors, legislators are usually limited to 8 or 12 years. A few states merely limit the number of consecutive terms that a legislator may serve rather than imposing an overall limit. The Supreme Court did not give states the permission to impose term limits on their legislatures until 1998, so all such limits have been put into law in the past few years.

Congressional term limits have had a less successful legal history. The idea of Congressional term limits became very popular in the mid-nineties, and a call for them was part of the Republican Party's 1994 "Contract With America." The Supreme Court declared in 1995 that imposing Congressional term limits would require a Constitutional amendment. Proponents of term limits brought such an amendment before Congress in 1997 but were unable to get the two-thirds vote that they needed. In 1995, some states tried to impose limits on the number of terms that their Congressional Representatives could serve, but this was declared unconstitutional.

Most of the arguments in this article focus on Congressional term limits, but, as you have probably guessed, the arguments for term limits in state legislatures are similar, except on a smaller scale.