2 U.S.C. § 1
Section 1 · Time for election of Senators
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 26 court decisions — leading case Foster v. Love (1997)
Most recently applied in Watson v. Republican National Committee (U.S. 2026, slip opinion) (June 2026)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
At the regular election held in any State next preceding the expiration of the term for which any Senator was elected to represent such State in Congress, at which election a Representative to Congress is regularly by law to be chosen, a United States Senator from said State shall be elected by the people thereof for the term commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1934—Act June 5, 1934, substituted “3d day of January” for “fourth day of March”.
Constitutional Provisions
The first section of Amendment XX to the Constitution provides in part: “* * * the terms of Senators and Representatives [shall end] at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.”
Cross References
Time for election of Senators, see Const. Art. I, §4, cl. 1.
Vacancies in the Senate, see Const. Amend. XVII.