Third Amendment to the Constitution

Our Veritas Omnia Vincit is here with the next Article of the Constitution in his series. I never gave the Third a lot of thought; thinking I’m sure a lot as a lot of Americans do it’s dated and not of much importance. Think again.

The third amendment, today’s most useless amendment?

By Veritas Omnia Vincit

As promised another entry in the first ten amendments. I will save the second amendment for the last article as I believe it is the most important amendment. So without further ado, here are some thoughts on good old number three.

“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.”

The third amendment these days is the one most often discussed as unnecessary and the one universally determined to be ready for repeal. As with all things, however, the history of this particular amendment is important to our understanding of the mindset of the framers and their views regarding government and what government was for and how it should operate.

The man who introduced the Amendments, James Madison, had this to say to Congress on June 8, 1789…

“First. That there be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That Government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”

Reading Madison’s words a couple of things should become clear rather quickly, for the founders the consent of the governed was paramount to successful governance as they believed no Government that ruled from above instead of deriving power from the people who were being governed was legitimate or appropriate to the task of providing liberty and property rights.

The consent of the governed was pretty clear in their day, that a government they held illegitimate should be overthrown and replaced by one that was limited in power by the people as opposed to a government that granted rights and limited power to the people. Those were subversive, radical ideas in that time. The world was filled with kings and queens and nobility of all manner each declaring themselves the owners of the people on their lands and the final word on what was or wasn’t law. Often using the Divine as the basis for their monarchal rule and never ending lines of despotic succession. Centuries of such rule disregarded in a short span of time and replaced with the idea that people had the natural right to decide how they wished to be governed and by whom and when they changed their minds those in power would be replaced at regular intervals by people more inline with the thinking of the great masses of the governed.

Which brings me right back to this third amendment, that your personal property is inviolable and that no one including the government has any right to place anyone into your home or on your property without your permission or without some manner of law defining exactly how it might happen in times of war for the defense of a young nation. This was a direct rejection of the British Crown and it’s “Intolerable Acts” those laws designed to punish Massachusetts for the Tea Party. The British called the Acts, Coercive Acts while the Colonies referred to them as Intolerable…another interesting use of phrase to define the same moment and action from opposing sides. The King had decided the colonies must pay for the privilege of having British Soldiers and must house them as the Soldiers required including on private property without compensation to the owners.

Our founders felt your property was yours and yours alone and that no one, without your permission, had any rights to that property. Defining the context of the third amendment as it was historically written matters a great deal, or at least it should. When you understand the Amendments in absolute terms and how important these concepts were to the founders of the nation it becomes easier to understand that there are not only no “reasonable” restrictions, but there are no useless amendments.

Interestingly enough with the rise of American military power the third might seem obsolete, however as recently as 1952 SCOTUS Justice Robert Jackson cited the third amendment as evidence that the framers intended to limit the president’s powers even in wartime in the case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company vs. Sawyer. That case was about President Truman directing Commerce Secretary Sawyer to seize the nation’s steel mills to avoid a strike that might hurt the Korean War effort. Truman’s administration lost that case 6-3 with Jackson writing for the majority and citing the third as noted previously.

While the third amendment is certainly not likely to be violated, why it exists and how it helps explain the founders thought processes on designing this nation of ours means this amendment should never be repealed and should serve as a reminder of how power can be abused if left unchecked.

So in the final analysis, perhaps it’s the least cited amendment we have these days but it is not at all useless.

Of course that’s just my thought on this matter, I welcome your consideration as well.
VoV

Useless and out of date? Any Individual Right that curtails the Government’s ability to adversely affect the lives of it’s citizens is far from useless.

Another thought provoker. Thanks, V

Category: Guest Post, The Constitution