Minimum age of U.S. presidents and other federal roles

According to Article II: Section one of the United States Constitution, the President of the United States (as well as the Vice President) must be at least 35 years of age, and have lived in the country for at least 14 years when taking office. Requirements for the House of Representatives and the Senate are also outlined in the Constitution, in Article I: Sections two and three, although figures are lower. There is no minimum age for Supreme Court Justices given in the constitution.

Terms and term lengths

The President of the United States is elected for a term of four years, and may hold office for a maximum of two terms (Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only president to have served more than two terms, as an exception was made during the Second World War). There is no maximum number of terms for Vice Presidents, who may hypothetically serve in the role under a number of presidents, although no Vice President has ever served more than two full terms. In the event of a President's death or removal from office, the Vice President would then assume the presidency - if the remaining term time is less than two years then this person may seek two further terms in the presidency, giving a maximum term length of 10 years (although this has never happened).

For representatives and senators, there is no maximum number of terms providing the candidate wins re-election. Some states did have term limits in the past, but these were invalidated in 1995 when the Supreme Court ruled that no state can impose stricter qualifications than those outlined in the Constitution. The longest-serving Senator was Robert Byrd, who served for over 51 years between 1959 and 2010, while the longest-serving Representative was John Dingell Jr., who served for over 59 years between 1955 and 2015. As appointments to the Supreme Court are lifetime appointments, they are not restricted by term lengths or limits.

Natural-born-citizen clause

Unlike the other roles, the Constitution includes a "natural-born-citizen" clause in reference to the President and Vice President, where a person must have been born in the U.S. (or be a citizen at the time of the Constitution's adoption) to be eligible for either role. This was included to prevent unwanted foreign influence at the highest level of U.S. government. Historically, there were few challenges to this clause, however, as there is no clear definition of what makes a natural-born-citizen, it has been addressed several times in the past two decades. This was most notable in the 2008 election, where John McCain's status was called into question since he was born in the United States' Panama Canal Zone, while Barack Obama's eligibility was questioned due to a widely-discredited conspiracy theory that he was born in Kenya (this became known as the "birther movement"). Since 2016, questions were raised over candidates such as Ted Cruz and Tulsi Gabbard, who acquired U.S. citizenship through their parents - since this time it has become more widely accepted that those who qualify for birthright citizenship should also be considered natural-born-citizens.