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RANCHO RESORT
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Tucson Urban League
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Jorgensen Brooks Group
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Charles E. Gillman Company
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Everready Glass
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Editor's note: The United States Constitution lays down the structure of the government and separates the powers among three distinct branches — the legislative, executive and judicial. The landmark document was adopted Sept. 17, 1787. The Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, went into effect Dec. 15, 1791.

On May 21 and June 4, we presented a discussion on the First and Second amendments, respectively. We'll be exploring the entire Bill of Rights in the next few weeks. Read the May 21 and June 4 articles at www. azstarnet.com/opinion online.

Today: the Third Amendment.

You won't find defendants citing a breach of their Third Amendment rights on a "Law & Order" episode. We can never remember seeing protest placards involving the Third Amendment. A documentary film on it undoubtedly would be a short subject.

The Third Amendment, which protects U.S. citizens from the military billeting troops in private homes, rests in obscurity, tucked between the Second Amendment's right to bear arms and the Fourth Amendment, which restricts search and seizure.

While 21st-century citizens may scratch their heads, say "huh" and perhaps look up the word "quarter" in the dictionary, the abusive practice of stuffing British soldiers into colonists' homes was a serious issue 230 years ago and a major complaint against King George III.

The practice inspired the grievance in the Declaration of Independence: "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."

The quartering of soldiers in colonial homes was standard operating procedure for Britain, which needed shelter and food for its troops whenever entangled in a North American military operation.

The British could not afford to build barracks in the colonies, said Tucson attorney David T. Hardy, who co-authored "The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History," published in the American Journal of Legal History in 1991.

The French developed the idea of barracks in the early 1700s, Hardy said. The idea was readily accepted. If a fort or a town was attacked in the middle of the night, it was more effective and efficient to have the troops move from one point rather than have them scurrying from homes and inns all over town.

The British government was financially strapped in the 1760s, having just waged a major war and with a major empire that included Canada and India, which it had to garrison and govern, Hardy said.

In addition, the building of barracks would have sent the message that the British were maintaining a permanent army in North America, something the colonists opposed.

The impact of this billeting was hardship on the American colonists.

"The 18th-century recruiters did not look for a few good men. They looked for a lot of bad ones," said Hardy. "Infantrymen were seen as machines, beings that could load fast and fire in the general direction of an opponent."

The recruiters looked for people whom the community wouldn't miss if they died or were shipped away. Recruiters often raided jails and debtors' prisons, which essentially made the 18th-century British army a criminal subpopulation, Hardy said.

When troops were quartered in Boston, it had a string of thefts, rapes and assaults and an outbreak of smallpox, said Hardy. "It's hardly surprising that no Americans wanted British troops around them, let alone to be required to put them up in their houses."

It was a financial hardship, too. The private homeowners fed the soldiers in their homes and sent the bill to London, but payment was often six months or a year down the road, Hardy said.

While vitally important to our nation's founders, the Third Amendment is seldom cited and is one of the Constitution's least-litigated sections. The Third Amendment was called upon in a 1982 2nd Circuit decision; Engblom v. Carey involved New York's decision to temporarily house National Guard soldiers in correction officers' onsite housing during a prison staff strike.

Even though the Third Amendment may not seem relevant or especially important in 2006, it guarantees that troops are not forced into the homes of unwilling Americans. It is an enduring right we should appreciate, especially when we imagine the possibility of life without it.