I think the 3rd is still OK
Bubba notes We don’t need no stinkin’ 4th or 5th Amendment. Apparently, the only one we need is the 3rd because, to my knowledge, it hasn’t been bastardized yet. Bubba then details how local law enforcement can’t even be bothered to obey the already unconstitutional state law. Give it a read.
December 21st, 2004 at 8:11 pm
I disagree with your assertion that the 3rd ammendment hasn’t been bastardized yet.
At the time of the ammendment’s writing, soliders were the de facto federal constabulary. Moreover, during the Revolutionary War, the British had frequently quartered troops in the homes of people suspected of supporting independence in order to keep track of their activities. So the whole point of the third wasn’t to ban quartering troops in homes because of inconvenience to the homeowner, but because, in the era before the invention of modern phones and electronics, it was the primary form by which a government would seek to unlawfully surveil its citizens.
Seen in that light, the modern ability for the government to keep tabs on every aspect of a citizen’s life without any sort of probable cause (or in the day of TIA, without even suspicion of wrongdoing) is a massive violation of the spirit of the third ammendment, if not the letter of it. So to the extent that it’s become to be interpretted as referring purely to the housing arrangements of troops and not its intended purpose limiting certain activities of the government, it has been bastardized.
December 21st, 2004 at 10:06 pm
Hadn’t thought about it like that stormy. Interesting point.
December 22nd, 2004 at 7:24 pm
There actually has been one US Court of Appeals case on the meaning of the 3rd Amendment — in the early 1980s, there was a strike of prison guards in New York State, so the governor called in the National Guard to serve as prison guards.
Well, the prison guards in at least one facility enjoyed Dep’t of Corrections-provided housing, so the governor said — hell, just put the guard troops there, since that’s where the prison guards live and the National Guard is now doing that job.
Lo and behold, the (striking) prison guards sued saying that that would be a quartering of troops in violation of the 3rd Amendment. The prison guards won that case, and the federal courts said — yep, you can’t quarter troops in private homes, even if those homes are provided by the government.
A small victory, but an important one.
December 23rd, 2004 at 3:11 pm
Andrew, I’d like a cite for that, as it doesn’t pass the smell test. By its terms, the Third Amendment only bars the peacetime quartering of soldiers in a “house,” and then only which such quartering is done “without the consent of the Owner.” Presumably, the State of New York, being the owner of the “house” in question, consented to its own action.
December 26th, 2004 at 4:15 pm
OK, I’m officially an idiot. Rather than demand Andrew provide a case, I should have followed my own link and read all the way to the bottom, in which case I would have found it myself. The case is Engblom v. Carey, 677 F. 2d 957 (2d Cir. 1982), and it pretty well does say what Andrew said it said. It wasn’t so much a matter of the housing being provided by the government per se, as whether or not living quarters provided by employers gave rise to a landlord-tenant relationship, which would enjoy Third Amendment protection, as opposed to something analogous to “possession incident to employment,” which would not. On that point, I found the dissent far more convincing than the majority:
Indeed.