The Risk of Rights audits the Bill of Rights one amendment at a time. This is the shortest entry in the series, and for the best possible reason. Terms per Black’s Law Dictionary. Reporting on documents, not legal advice.
The 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.” — U.S. Const. amend. III (ratified 1791)
What it protects
A single, specific abuse: the government forcing you to house and feed its soldiers. It is the only amendment aimed at one narrow grievance — and the only one that can fairly be called finished.
The terms, per Black’s
- Quartering — Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024): the furnishing of lodging (and sometimes food) for soldiers, especially in private homes.
- Dormant — of a legal provision, in force but rarely or never invoked because the conduct it forbids has ceased.
The record today
It won, and then it went quiet. In roughly 235 years the Third Amendment has generated exactly one significant federal appellate decision — Engblom v. Carey, 677 F.2d 957 (2d Cir. 1982) — as our Grievance Audit detailed. Soldiers are not billeted in American homes. The government does not try. There is no litigation because there is no violation. Measured strictly as a right, this is the cleanest success in the entire Bill of Rights: a promise so thoroughly kept that most Americans forget it exists.
The one asterisk. The principle underneath the Third Amendment — that the home is the one place the state may not enter at will — did not retire; it migrated to the Fourth Amendment, where, as the next entry shows, the record is far messier. The specific promise about soldiers is intact. The broader idea of the home as sanctuary is the one under pressure — and it is scored there, not here.
By the numbers
- 1 — significant Third Amendment appellate decision in U.S. history (Engblom v. Carey, 1982) (federal case law)
- 0 — soldiers quartered in American homes against owners’ will in the modern era; the promise, kept
The counterweight
Is a dormant right really a strong right, or just an untested one — would it hold if a genuine quartering crisis arose? The honest answer: we don’t fully know, because it has never been seriously tried. But “we have not needed to enforce it because no one attempts the abuse” is the best outcome a right can have. A guarantee that deters the conduct entirely has done its whole job. The Third Amendment’s silence is not weakness. It is victory so total it looks like absence.
The audit
The 1791 promise was no forced quartering of troops. The 2026 record is: none. Full stop. The right is not at risk; it is retired, honorably, having won its one war. The only live question it raises is inherited by the amendment next door — whether the home, in an age of cameras and no-knock warrants, is still the fortress the Founders assumed.
Cessante ratione legis, cessat ipsa lex — when the reason for a law ceases, so does the law itself. The Third Amendment sleeps because the danger it named is gone. May the rest of the Bill of Rights someday be so lucky.
Next in The Risk of Rights: the Fourth Amendment.
Sources:
- U.S. Const. amend. III — text of the Third Amendment
- Engblom v. Carey, 677 F.2d 957 (2d Cir. 1982) — the lone significant Third Amendment case
- Freedom Beagle — Grievance Audit No. 5: Quartering Troops — fuller treatment of the same amendment
- Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) — definitions: quartering; dormant