Amend. III
Third Amendment
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.
gap
Doctrine below is drawn from
raw/founder-constitution/tocs/amendIII.md(anchors only — 4 of 12 documents read).
Original public meaning. The clause answers a specific colonial grievance the Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776) itemized against the Crown: "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures... For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: — For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." Delaware's Declaration of Rights and Fundamental Rules (11 Sept. 1776) supplied close to the ratified text itself: "no Soldier ought to be quartered in any House in Time of Peace without the Consent of the Owner; and in Time of War in such Manner only as the Legislature shall direct."
The House of Representatives' drafting debate of 17 Aug. 1789 shows the peacetime/wartime distinction as a considered choice, not an assumed given. The committee draft read almost exactly as ratified. Thomas Sumter moved to strike the wartime proviso entirely, leaving only an absolute peacetime consent requirement, calling forced quartering "a burthen, and very oppressive, even in cases where the owner gave his consent." Roger Sherman opposed the motion on practical grounds: "it was absolutely necessary that marching troops should have quarters, whether in time of peace or war," and if public barracks were unavailable, quarters "must be procured elsewhere" — citing England's practice of billeting troops on public-house keepers and, with the consent of the magistracy, on private houses. The final text retained both halves: an unconditional peacetime consent rule and a wartime rule left to statute rather than to unlimited military discretion.
Joseph Story's Commentaries (1833), § 1893, reads the clause as securing "that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion," and traces the underlying grievance to England's own Petition of Right (3 Charles I), which Parliament had already declared peacetime billeting "a great grievance" over a century before the Amendment's ratification.
gap
These sources establish the clause's colonial grievance and its castle-doctrine rationale. No founding-era source in this ingest addresses whether "Soldier" reaches state militia or National Guard personnel, or whether the clause binds the states directly of its own force (as opposed to through Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, per Engblom, below).
Maryland's ratifying convention: a direct textual ancestor. The Maryland convention ratified 63-11 on 26 April 1788 without considering amendments; a convention-appointed committee of thirteen then drafted amendments for recommendation to the people. Its tenth proposed amendment states the peacetime-consent rule in language close to the ratified text, grouped with two related standing-army restrictions the committee considered part of the same anxiety — enlistment terms and mutiny-bill duration:
"That soldiers be not quartered, in time of peace, upon private houses, without the consent of the owners." — Maryland Convention committee, proposed amendment 10, 1788, quoted in Elliot's Debates vol. 2
"That no soldier be enlisted for a longer time than four years, except in time of war, and then only during the war. ... That no mutiny bill continue in force longer than two years." — Maryland Convention committee, proposed amendments 9 and 11, 1788, quoted in Elliot's Debates vol. 2
The committee's own rationale ties all three amendments to "the unlimited power of raising and regulating standing armies, the natural enemies to freedom" — the same standing-army anxiety this page's Declaration of Independence and Petition of Right sources document, restated by a ratifying-convention committee rather than a pamphleteer. Unlike Massachusetts's ratification instrument, Maryland's amendments were negotiated after an unconditional ratification vote, and the convention's majority voted 47-27 to adjourn without a floor vote on the committee's list — so the quartering language reflects committee consensus, not convention endorsement. See Elliot's Debates (Vol. II).
Deeper historical background (Annotated Constitution)
The quartering grievance predates England entirely — Roman territorial governors used quartering as "a tool of oppression and source of income." In England, the Petition of Right of 1628 complained that "great Companies of Souldiers and Marriners have been dispersed into divers Counties of the Realme, and the inhabitants against their wills have been compelled to receive them into their houses, and there to suffer them to sojourne against the Lawes and Customes of this Realme." The English Parliament's 1679 Anti-Quartering Act responded in kind: "Noe officer military or civill nor any other person whatever shall from henceforth presume to place quarter or billet any souldier or souldiers." A decade later, the Declaration of Rights (later the Bill of Rights of 1689) cited King James II's continued standing-army and quartering practices among the justifications for his ouster in the Glorious Revolution, and the Mutiny Act of 1689 further codified anti-quartering protections — but these protections did not extend to the colonies.
Colonial legislatures tried to regulate quartering on their own; New York's 1683 Charter of Libertyes and Privilidges provided: "Noe Freeman shall be compelled to receive any Marriners or Souldiers into his house and there suffer them to Sojourne, against their willes provided Alwayes it be not in time of Actuall Warr within this province." Parliament did not extend the Mutiny Act's colonial protections until the Quartering Act of 1765, which forbade quartering in private homes but required colonies to bear the costs of barracks or to house soldiers in "inns, livery stables, ale-houses, victualling-houses." Rising friction — including the 1770 Boston Massacre — led to the "Intolerable" or "Coercive Acts," among them the Quartering Act of 1774, which expanded British officers' authority to seize "uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings" for quartering. The Declaration of Independence's thirteenth grievance against George III counted "Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."
Four states — Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire — wrote peacetime quartering restrictions into their own organic laws between 1776 and 1784, while the Articles of Confederation contained none. The Framers considered a restriction at the Convention (Charles Pinckney proposed "No soldier shall be quartered in any House in time of peace without consent of the owner"), but it was not part of the final draft; the Federal Farmer objected that the omission, combined with the standing-army power, strengthened the central government. Five state ratifying conventions recommended a quartering amendment in two forms — Maryland and New Hampshire's peacetime-only version, and Virginia, New York, and North Carolina's version adding a wartime limit "in a manner to be prescribed by law." Madison introduced the second, more protective form in the House, and it became the ratified Third Amendment.
Litigation remains almost nonexistent. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484 (1965), listed the Third Amendment among the constitutional guarantees whose "penumbras" "create zones of privacy"; Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 n.5 (1967), called it "another aspect of privacy from governmental intrusion"; and Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 15 (1972), cited it as evidence of "a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs." Engblom v. Carey, the only federal appeals case to examine the clause in depth, held the Third Amendment incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, though it did not reach the merits of whether New York's use of correction officers' residences to house National Guard members during a strike violated the clause.
Relationships
- Governing Text
- Amend. III
- Key Cases
- Engblom v. Carey
- Source
- Amendments Transcription (National Archives); Founders' Constitution; Annotated Constitution
Sources
- Amendments Transcription (National Archives)
- Founders' Constitution — Amendment III
- Annotated Constitution — Amdt3.1, p. 1601
- Elliot's Debates (Vol. II) — Maryland Convention committee's proposed amendment 10 (1788), a direct textual ancestor of the ratified Amendment