Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The amendment prohibits any individual who has been elected president twice from being elected again. Under the amendment, an individual who fills an unexpired presidential term lasting greater than two years is also prohibited from winning election as president more than once. Scholars debate whether the amendment prohibits affected individuals from succeeding to the presidency under any circumstances or whether it only applies to presidential elections.
United States Constitution
The Constitution has twenty-seven amendments. Structurally, the Constitution's original text and all prior amendments remain untouched. The precedent for this practice was set in 1789, when Congress considered and proposed the first several Constitutional amendments. Among these, Amendments 1–10 are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, and Amendments 13–15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Excluding the Twenty-seventh Amendment, which was pending before the states for , the longest pending amendment that was successfully ratified was the Twenty-second Amendment, which took . The Twenty-sixth Amendment was ratified in the shortest time, days. The average ratification time for the first twenty-six amendments was 1 year, 252 days, for all twenty-seven, 9 years, 48 days.