NEWS
By Karen Hosler and Karen Hosler,Washington Bureau of The Sun | February 27, 1995
WASHINGTON -- Voters have forced a dramatic turnover in Congress in the past decade, but the change seems only to have heightened their enthusiasm for an uphill legislative battle to guarantee periodic housecleanings."
NEWS
By Lyle Denniston and Lyle Denniston,Washington Bureau of The Sun | November 28, 1994
WASHINGTON -- Digging deeply into history for guidance on a major constitutional dispute of today, the Supreme Court reaches the congressional term-limits issue this week.In recent days, the justices and their clerks have been poring over a stack of blue, red, green and yellow briefs, preparing for a 90-minute hearing tomorrow and for a later ruling that just might shake the foundations of Congress.The constitutional question is one of the most basic the court has faced in years, and one the court has never considered in the Constitution's 207-year history.
NEWS
By JACK GERMOND & JULES WITCOVER | November 18, 1994
WASHINGTON -- All through House Speaker Tom Foley's unsuccessful campaign for re-election in the face of the concerted drive to defeat him by advocates of congressional term limits, he argued that the best term-limits device was the ballot box. If you didn't like the job your congressman was doing, Foley said, you had a chance every two years to throw him out.After passing up that chance in 15 straight elections, voters in his district in Washington state...
NEWS
June 22, 1994
The Supreme Court's decision to hear a congressional term limits case is good news. We hope the high court takes up the case quickly next term and renders a rapid verdict. We hope it will rule that term limits are unconstitutional.We expect that it will. In order to uphold term limits, the high court would have to read into the Constitution's Ninth and Tenth amendments the right of states to over-rule the "congressional qualifications" clause of the Constitution's Article I. That is something no judge has been willing to do.Advocates of term limits for members of Congress make some good arguments about the ill effects that come with entrenched incumbency, but they would treat all veteran legislators alike.
NEWS
By Lyle Denniston and Lyle Denniston,Washington Bureau of The Sun | June 21, 1994
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to settle a core constitutional question that reaches back to America's founding and now fuels a hot political controversy: states' power to limit congressional terms.The "term limits" movement, a spreading campaign that has capitalized on voters' deep discontent with politics, has lost two key battles in lower courts over limits on the number of terms a lawmaker may serve in the House or Senate.Now, the nation's highest court has agreed to hear an Arkansas case, the first major test case on the question.
NEWS
By JACK GERMOND & JULES WITCOVER | February 14, 1994
WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress, and particularly House Speaker Tom Foley, no doubt are breathing easier in the (( wake of a federal judge's decision in Foley's home state of Washington throwing out term limits imposed by the voters in 1992.Foley would have had to give up his House seat in 1998 as the result of a ballot initiative approved 15 months ago. But the judge ruled that the state may not impose qualifications beyond those of age, citizenship and state residency stipulated in the Constitution.