Quartering soldiers

John Washburn jwashburn at whittmanhart.com
Wed Jan 14 13:59:35 PST 2004


I seem to recall a case where a land owner used the third amendment to
refuse and block rent-free occupation of his land by the Border Patrol.
His land was bounded on the south by the Mexican/US border.

This case (mid-70's)already makes the generalization from military to
agents of the state.

I will try to find the citation.  If found it will be posted.

-----Original Message-----
From: bgt [mailto:bgt at chrootlabs.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 1:45 PM
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: Quartering soldiers

On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 12:48, Tim May wrote:
> On Jan 13, 2004, at 8:41 AM, Steve Schear wrote:
> 
> > At 11:23 PM 1/12/2004, Tim May wrote:
> >> "But if I own a computer and I rent out accounts to others and the
FBI
> >> comes to me and says "We are putting a Carnivore computer in your
> >> place," how else can this be interpreted _except_ as a violation of
> >> the Third?"
> >>
> The pure form of the Third (in this abstract sense) is when government

> knocks on one's door and says "Here is something you must put inside 
> your house."

For this to make sense, we have to interpret Soldier to mean not
just agents of the armed forces (military), it has to mean 
law-enforcement as well.  I can accept the idea of abstracting the 
Third beyond humans to software/hardware agents, etc... but I'm
not so sure about the military vs. law enforcement distinction.  
Can anyone point me to some founder's writings that may help 
support the interpretation of Soldier to mean any agent of the 
government?

Even if we did extend the Third to mean law-enforcement... since
Congress has repeatedly ceded their authority to determine when
the country was "in a time of war" to the Executive, and as such 
we are now in a perpetual time of war, any quartering has to be
prescribed by law, rather than prohibited outright.  For these
reasons, I have to agree with Tim's earlier referenced post, to
the effect of "the only solutions now available are Technology 
and Terrorism." 

> By the way, there have been a bunch of cases where residents of a 
> neighborhood were ordered to leave so that SWAT teams could be in
their 
> houses to monitor a nearby house where a hostage situation had 
> developed. (It is possible that in each house they occupied they 
> received uncoerced permission to occupy the houses, but I don't think 
> this was always the case; however, I can't cite a concrete case of 
> this. Maybe Lexis has one.)
> 
> If this takeover of houses to launch a raid is not a "black letter
law" 
> case of the government quartering troops in residences, nothing is. 
> Exigent circumstance, perhaps, but so was King George's need to
quarter 
> his troops.

I think someone in this case would have a much better argument for
a Fourth amendment violation (unreasonable seizure of their home, 
albeit temporarily), though probably, today, still unsuccessful in
a court.  

--bgt





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list