Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Some argue that the 22nd Amendment and 12th Amendment bar any two-term president from later serving as vice president as well as from succeeding to the presidency from any point in the presidential line of succession. Others contend that the original intent of the 12th Amendment concerns qualification for "service" (age, residence, and citizenship), while the 22nd Amendment, concerns qualifications for "election", and thus (strictly applying the text) a former two-term president is still eligible to "serve" as vice president (neither amendment restricts the number of times an individual can be elected to the vice presidency), and then succeed to the presidency to serve out the balance of the term (though prohibited from running for election to an additional term).
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.