Constitutional Dadaism

It’s a scientific fact, my dear Reginald, that humankind takes itself just a wee bit too seriously for its own good. It’s awfully well-documented, and everybody knows it, at least when you start polling outside of the understandably biased homo sapiens sapiens gene pool.

Me, I was fortunate enough to learn this uncomfortable fact early in life. Learned it from my Uncle Maretin, I did, and he was a well-respected East Liverpool freshwater prawn.

I’ve been laughing about it ever since.

But you see, Uncle Maretin – God rest his prawny soul – died a long, long time ago in an unspeakably horrible beluga insemination accident. And if anything, the situation has gotten a heckuva lot worse since his day. The situation with us humans, I mean.

Which is why I was so delighted to find a local newspaper reporter engaging in performance art on my voicemail last week. The news as performance art! That’s a step in the right direction, I say.

His message said this: “Ms. Oopsy, I was hoping to get a quote in reaction to that Texas attorney’s recent claim that the Democratic health care bill currently under consideration in Congress is unconstitutional based on 3^rd Amendment violations.”

Great googly moogly! I thought to myself: Unconstitutional based on WHAT?! Did he say, “based on Dustin Hoffman”?

“Lima beans”?

“Telekinetic cunnilingus”?

Now, your truly absurdist media performance art should not be attempted by just any old schmuck with a journalism degree in hand, no sir. The reporter on my voicemail had to be quite the master at his craft before even attempting a high wire act such as I had just witnessed. It’s like John Cage with his silent piece: It seems like it’d be easy, but more than 400 composers died trying to create 4’33” before Cage finally pulled it off.

So with the voicemail message still echoing in my ear, I called the reporter. I said this: “There is no doubt in my mind that such a huge and controversial statute – one that creates large scale changes in several major industries – is going to have its constitutionality challenged. In a statute of this length, it would be common for individual sections even to be found unconstitutional, although the severability-”

“No!” interrupted the reporter, who I will refer to as Tom Stoppard. “Michael Connelly, a retired constitutional law attorney out of Carrollton, Texas, has stated that it is unconstitutional based specifically on 3^rd Amendment violations.”

There was that damn phrase again. Whatever Stoppard was saying, it sounded like it started with “Thir-” and ended in “endment”.

I paused. This could be yet another nefarious plot by the media to kill lawyers by inducing Sudden Exploding Head Syndrome (otherwise known as SEHS).

My mental Google ran another search, which turned up only this: “Did you mean to type 2^nd Amendment? 4^th Amendment? 5^th Amendment?”

Me: “He’s not an attorney.”

Tom Stoppard: “Is too! I even looked it up myself. Twice.”

I laughed. This was funny, and anyway, it’s a scientific fact that humankind takes itself just a wee bit too seriously for its own good.

The 3^rd Amendment to the United States Constitution says this:

“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.”

It is far more likely that the current proposed health care bill will be knocked down based on the early work of King Crimson than on the 3^rd Amendment to the Constitution.

I have never and will never make reference to the 3^rd Amendment in my legal practice if I live to be two hundred years old. If I ever found myself referring to the 3^rd Amendment in oral argument at court, I would immediately dive behind the podium and then blame it all on an intern and/or the Ebola virus.

There is no 3^rd Amendment case law precedent.

In the two hundred nineteen years since the Constitution was ratified, the Supreme Court has never considered a 3^rd Amendment case.

The only lawsuit ever filed in federal court based on 3^rd Amendment violations got thrown out. Because it was stupid.

In fact, I daresay that if a client walked into my office tomorrow and said that he’d arrived home the night before to find United States Special Forces sleeping in his bed and the 1^st Marine Raider Battalion conducting war games in his guest bathroom, I STILL would not sue based on the 3^rd Amendment.

I did not say that to Tom Stoppard, however.

That would have been falling into the trap he and/or Michael Connelly had so cleverly set up for me.

No, I called his bluff.

And so, if and when I am quoted on the hilarious 3^rd Amendment/health care issue, this is how it shall read: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe.”

Now, here is a picture of some people looking at a giant baby head: