No quartering of Soldiers

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

In the colonial era, the practice of billeting British troops in private homes was a widespread . One of the complaints against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was "for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us." ... [T]he Third Amendment has proven to be one of the least-litigated sections of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has never directly reviewed the meaning of the amendment ... [It] has been cited in passing in other cases, most notably opinions arguing that there is a constitutional right to privacy, such as the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut ...

The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that the federal government cannot house soldiers in a person’s home without their consent. ​This straightforward amendment has generated little debate about its meaning or interpretation. However, it does provide some insight into other issues ... The Third Amendment also reinforces several other ideas important to the Framers. For example, it protects citizens from government intrusion into their homes ... [It] is also the only one that delineates how the government may interact with citizens during war versus peacetime.

Parliament tried again to assert its supremacy over the colonies. It passed a Quartering Act that empowered the British commander in America to demand lodgings for his soldiers. In June 1767, Parliament enacted new colonial taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Franklin urged some kind of conciliation, but back in the colonies Boston patriots Samuel Adams and James Otis spurred the Massachusetts Assembly to call for renewed resistance against British policies. Public opinion radicalized after the Boston Massacre, in which British soldiers killed five Boston patriots.

The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." ... William S. Fields and David T. Hardy point out in their excellent article, "The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History" ...:

... During the seventeenth century, problems associated with the involuntary quartering of soldiers and the maintenance of standing armies became crucial issues propelling the English nation toward civil war.

[Lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Edward] Coke was a passionate advocate of common law ... In 1628 he helped to draft the Petition of Right, which became a foundational document of the English Constitution. The Petition detailed the specific liberties of freemen, which legally constrained the king. For example, martial law could not be declared during a time of peace ... When drafting their own documents to ensure liberty, the Founding Fathers drew heavily on his ideas. For example, the Third Amendment of the Bill of Rights derives from the Petition of Right’s ban on billeting troops.

Although the third amendment is today widely taken for granted, to many in the revolutionary generation, its protections were a matter of great importance ... [T]he quartering problem was by its history and nature so intimately connected with the larger political issue of the "standing army," that in the end, the successful resolution of that larger issue for practical purposes rendered superfluous the protections which came to be embodied within the third amendment ... The earliest efforts to curb the abuses relating to the involuntary quartering of soldiers appeared in the charters of towns and boroughs.

The Third Amendment was directly inspired by the abuses colonialists suffered at the hands of British soldiers immediately prior to and during the Revolutionary War ... It should not be surprising to discover that United States troops have been quartered contrary to the Third Amendment; the Bill of Rights suffers violations all too frequently. It would be remarkable, however, if the Third Amendment had been violated openly and repeatedly over a period of several years without creating an uproar. Yet this seems to have been the case ... during the War of 1812 and the Civil War.