Identify the main idea and major and minor details from paragraph 3.
Category
Statement
Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution sets the length of terms for House members (2 years) and
specifies the basic qualifications for service.
House members must be 25 years of age, a citizen of the United States for at least 7 years, and a
resident of the state where they are elected.
Notice, however, that the Constitution does not say that House members must reside in the district
they represent.
Throughout our history, on a number of occasions, politicians have been elected to represent
districts in which they did not live.
Nor does the Constitution put any limit on the number of terms a representative may serve.
In the early 1990s, a number of states tried to limit the terms of members of Congress-both in the
House and in the Senate.
The Supreme Court, however, in Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), found such restrictions
unconstitutional.
It seems, then, that the only way to limit the number of terms for members of Congress would be a
constitutional amendment.