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Third Amendment
Posted by David Hardy · 2 July 2006 10:05 AM
I've decided to branch out, as this article in the Arizona Daily Star should show. There's so much competition in the Second Amendment field, with Steve Halbrook, Dave Kopel, Richard Gardiner, Don Kates, Chuck Michel, etc. But there's NOBODY doing Third Amendment cases, and my two coauthored pieces are about the only scholarship in the field.
Of course, cases may be a bit hard to find. In the entire 20th century, one occurred, when someone tried to put up National Guardsmen, in town to deal with a prison riot, up at someone's house.
I don't know: there may be a case to be made that the Third Amendment prohibits wiretapping.
The Crown didn't quarter soldiers in Colonists' houses just to save money, but to monitor their sentiments and "chill" those sentiments if they turned pro-independence. In the 21st Century, listening in on dinner-table conversations and going on fishing expeditions for revolutionaries would necessary take a technological form.
I didn't come up with this idea, it appeared in an article I'm trying to find again from Whole Earth Review about 20 years ago. Nobody else seems to like the idea either, I admit. But there may be a good blog post in there for someone versed in the history of quartering before and during the Revolution.