Quartering Acts - Modern Relevance

Modern Relevance

  • A section of the United States Declaration of Independence listing the colonies' grievances against the King explicitly notes:

He has combined with people others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

  • The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution, expressly prohibited the military from peacetime quartering of troops without consent of the owner of the house. A product of their times, the relevance of the Acts and the Third Amendment has greatly declined since the era of the American Revolution, having been the subject of only one case in over 200 years (Engblom v. Carey).
  • The Quartering Act was one of the reasons for the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which authorized a militia. Standing armies were mistrusted, and the First Congress considered quartering of troops to have been one of the tools of oppression before and during the American revolution.

Read more about this topic:  Quartering Acts

Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or relevance:

    In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church.... We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.
    Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)

    Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)