Third Amendment to the United States Constitution
Encyclopedia
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
is a part of the United States Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
. It was introduced on September 5, 1789, and then three quarters of the states ratified this as well as 9 other amendments on December 15, 1791. It prohibits, in peacetime, the quartering of soldier
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...
s in private homes without the owner's consent. It makes quartering legally permissible in wartime only, and then only according to law.
Text
History
Text of the amendment echoed the English Bill of Rights 1689 which stated the late King James the Second ... did endeavour to subvert and extirpate ... the laws and liberties of this kingdom ... by raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law.In 1765, the British parliament enacted the first of the Quartering Acts, requiring the American colonies to pay the costs of British soldiers serving in the colonies, and requiring that if the local barracks
Barracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
provided insufficient space, that the colonists provide space for the troops to live in alehouses, inns, and livery stables. After the Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...
, the Quartering Act of 1774 was enacted; it was one of the Intolerable Acts
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America...
that pushed the colonies toward revolution. The later Quartering Act authorized British troops to be quartered wherever necessary, including in private homes.
For that reason, the quartering of troops was cited as a grievance in the United States Declaration of Independence
United States Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a...
:
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
At the 1788 Virginia Ratifying Convention
Virginia Ratifying Convention
The Virginia Ratifying Convention was a convention of 168 delegates from Virginia who met in 1788 to ratify or reject the United States Constitution, which had been drafted at the Philadelphia Convention the previous year.The Convention met and deliberated from June 2 through June 27 in Richmond...
, when debating the ratification of the new United States Constitution, Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786...
stated, "One of our first complaints, under the former government, was the quartering of troops among us. This was one of the principal reasons for dissolving the connection with Great Britain. Here we may have troops in time of peace. They may be billeted in any manner — to tyrannize, oppress, and crush us." Henry was objecting to the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees of civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
. Later, following the recommendation of the convention, the Third Amendment, along with the others that now form the Bill of Rights, was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789. The adoption by ratification
Ratification
Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent where the agent lacked authority to legally bind the principal. The term applies to private contract law, international treaties, and constitutionals in federations such as the United States and Canada.- Private law :In contract law, the...
by three-fourths of the states was completed on December 15, 1791.
Several revisions were proposed before its adoption, which chiefly differed in the way in which peace and war were distinguished (including the possibility of a situation, such as unrest, which was neither peace nor war), and whether the executive or the legislature would have the authority to authorize quartering.
Case law
The Third Amendment is among the least cited sections of the U.S. Constitution. There have been no major Supreme Court cases concerning violations of the Third Amendment, mainly because the quartering problem has not recurred since the American Revolution.Right to privacy
Some Supreme Court justices have occasionally invoked the Third Amendment when seeking to establish a base for the right to privacy. For example, the Opinion of the Court by Justice William O. DouglasWilliam O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
in Griswold v. Connecticut
Griswold v. Connecticut
Griswold v. Connecticut, , was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives...
, 381 U.S. 479, 484 (1965) cites the amendment as implying a belief that an individual's home should be free from agents of the state.
Limitation on executive power
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. SawyerYoungstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, , also commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case, was a United States Supreme Court decision that limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article...
343 U.S. 579, 644 (1952), Justice Robert H. Jackson's
Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was United States Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials...
concurring opinion cites the Third Amendment as providing evidence of the Framers
Founding Fathers of the United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, establishing the United States Constitution, or by some...
' intent to constrain executive power even during wartime: "[t]hat military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary American history. Time out of mind, and even now in many parts of the world, a military commander can seize private housing to shelter his troops. Not so, however, in the United States, for the Third Amendment says...[E]ven in war time, his seizure of needed military housing must be authorized by Congress."
Directly relevant case law
One of the few times a federal courtUnited States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
was asked to invalidate a law or action on Third Amendment grounds was in Engblom v. Carey
Engblom v. Carey
Engblom v. Carey, 677 F.2d 957 , was a court case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It is the only significant court decision based on a direct challenge under the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution.-The case:The case was initiated by a 1979 strike...
, . In 1979, prison officials in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
organized a strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
; they were evicted from their prison facility residences, which were reassigned to members of the National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
who had temporarily taken their place as prison guards. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals...
ruled: (1) that the term owner in the Third Amendment includes tenants (paralleling similar cases regarding the Fourth Amendment
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause...
, governing search and seizure), (2) National Guard troops count as soldiers for the purposes of the Third Amendment, and (3) that the Third Amendment is incorporated
Incorporation (Bill of Rights)
The incorporation of the Bill of Rights is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government...
(that is, that it applies to the states) by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In an earlier case, United States v. Valenzuela, , the defendant asked that a federal rent-control law be struck down because it was "the incubator and hatchery of swarms of bureaucrats to be quartered as storm troopers upon the people in violation of Amendment III of the United States Constitution." The court declined his request. Later, in Jones v. United States Secretary of Defense, , Army reservists cited the Third Amendment as justification for sitting out a parade. Similarly far-fetched arguments in a variety of contexts have also been denied in a number of court cases. Thus, Engblom v. Carey remains the only significant Third Amendment case law.