Third Amendment to the United States Constitution

The amendment was a response to the Quartering Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the buildup to the American Revolutionary War, which had allowed the British Army to lodge soldiers in public buildings.

The Third Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison as a part of the United States Bill of Rights, in response to Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution.

The amendment is one of the least controversial of the Constitution and is rarely litigated, with criminal justice writer Radley Balko calling it the "runt piglet" of the U.S.

Many Anti-Federalists, in contrast, now opposed it, realizing the Bill's adoption would greatly lessen the chances of a second constitutional convention, which they desired.

[11] Anti-Federalists such as Richard Henry Lee also argued that the Bill left the most objectionable portions of the Constitution, such as the federal judiciary and direct taxation, intact.

[12] On November 20, 1789, New Jersey ratified eleven of the twelve amendments, rejecting Article II, which regulated Congressional pay raises.

Virginia initially postponed its debate, but after Vermont was admitted to the Union in 1791, the total number of states needed for ratification rose to eleven.

[15] In the words of Encyclopædia Britannica, "as the history of the country progressed with little conflict on American soil, the amendment has had little occasion to be invoked.

[18] In one of the seven opinions in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), Justice Robert H. Jackson cited the Third Amendment as providing evidence of the Framers' intent to constrain executive power even during wartime:[18] [t]hat military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary American history.

Not so, however, in the United States, for the Third Amendment says ... [E]ven in war time, his seizure of needed military housing must be authorized by Congress.

[20]One of the few times a federal court was asked to invalidate a law or action on Third Amendment grounds was in Engblom v. Carey (1982).

Later, in Jones v. United States Secretary of Defense (1972),[28] Army reservists unsuccessfully cited the Third Amendment as justification for refusing to march in a parade.