Who Was Prince William?

On Wednesday morning I had a return date (status hearing at which trial date is set) in Prince William County General District Court in Manassas, Virginia.   Upon completing my actual legal business it finally occurred to me to ask, after having practiced in Northern Virginia in general and PWC itself in particular since 1994, “who was Prince William?”  And with the county itself dating back to 1731 (before even the American Revolution), it obviously cannot be named after Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, the older son of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, born in 1982. 

Prince William County, Virginia.  Named after Prince William (1721-1765) (the Duke of Cumberland, buried in Westminster Abbey in London), third youngest son of King George II of England (predecessor to the more infamous King George III who reigned during our Revolution).   His own notoriety extended to the Jacobite Rebellion in England and some action in the Seven Years War – better known to us as the French & Indian War.  The Jacobite Rebellion (1745) was the last of a series of revolts which attempted to return the prior Stuart dynasty to the throne of England, Scotland, and Wales, which had been taken over by the House of Hanover, which lasted until Queen Victoria.  She was married to Prince Albert, of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and her son Edward VII took over in 1901.  He died in 1910, and George V took over.  In 1917, at war with Germany, they decided to change the name from Saxe-Coburg & Gotha to Windsor, so Edward VIII (1938), George VI (1938-1952, played by Colin Firth in "The King's Speech"), and Elizabeth II (1952 to present) are all monarchs of the House of Windsor, though tracing ancestry back to George I (1714-1727) who famously spoke more German than English.  Rumors of Queen Victoria having a German accent - though her own husband was German - are apparently not true.  However, her eldest grandchild was none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.  (See my blog post on the Hohenzollerns back on 1/6/17.)    
  

The major two areas in Prince William County are Manassas and Woodbridge, the county seat and courthouse being in the former.   Downtown Manassas is actually fairly small.  The courthouse has a cafeteria in the basement, the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court (child support between unmarried parents, spousal support outside divorce, and domestic abuse cases) on the ground floor, General District Court (civil cases under $25,000, misdemeanors and traffic cases) on the first floor, and Circuit Court (civil cases over $25,000, felonies, divorces) on the second floor).  The courthouse is fairly new, but I could not ascertain when it was built.  It predates my own ascent to Virginia bar-dom in 1994, so I’m guessing sometime in the 1980s or early 1990s.  The Manassas battlefield, where the various Bull Run battles of the Civil War took place, is also here, as is Jiffy Lube Live, formerly Nissan Pavilion, a large concert venue, somewhat of a semi-outdoor pavilion similar to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.  I recognize PWC police handling security at the concerts. 

John & Lorena Bobbitt.  I’d consider these the PWC court’s most famous trials. This was the famous couple – the wife cut off her allegedly abusive husband’s “Little Brother” which was successfully re-attached.  Each was charged with crimes (A&B for her, rape for him) and each was actually acquitted. 

Fairfax (City) and County.  Named after Thomas Fairfax, 6^th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1693-1781).  He actually lived in Virginia and developed those lands.  His estate at Greenway Court, Clarke County, Virginia (far west in the boondocks near West Virginia) seems to be nominal by now. 

Arlington County.  Named after Henry Bennet, the First Earl of Arlington (1618-1685).   English nobleman.  This is the Virginia county which, if you look at its dimensions, appears to be the lower southwest quadrant of the District of Columbia.   DC is split into four quadrants, divided north-south by Independence and Constitution Ave., and east-west by North and South Capital Streets, which are slightly off-center of the apex to the east by a few blocks.  “Southwest” is actually fairly small, because most of what we would think of as southwest is actually Arlington County, Virginia, ceded back to Virginia in 1846.  I lived there from 1990 (graduating from University of Maryland, College Park) until 2004 (moving to my current whereabouts, not far away in Fairfax County).   Note:  for those 14 years I was never called for jury duty in Arlington County.  Immediately upon moving to Fairfax County in October 2004 I received a jury duty summons, which I successfully evaded being a practicing attorney in Fairfax County.

Arlington County’s most famous building is the five-sided Pentagon.   Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Loudoun County.   Named after John Campbell, Fourth Earl of Loudoun (1705-1782).  A contemporary of Prince William, even served under him in the Jacobite Rebellion.  The county seat is Leesburg.  I’ve had numerous cases in the courthouse there. 

By the way.  In front of the courthouse is a Confederate statue.  We’ll see how long that lasts, but if you’re out to get rid of Confederate statues, Virginia in general and Richmond in particular will be a big task.  My own assessment is that the Confederates attempted to secede in April 1861 with the express intention, consistently maintained by all the major Confederates, of retaining their “peculiar institution” of slavery.  Any other issues of “states’ rights” are therefore irrelevancies added decades after the fact retroactively to justify a rebellion when slavery was long discredited and nowhere close to being a popular cause.  That being the case, we really have no legitimate reason to celebrate or treasure the rebellion.  Having said that, we might want to allow “these people” (as Robert E. Lee might put it) the prerogative to keep Richmond itself as the exclusive territory in which any such statues and memorials can remain out of sheer historical significance. 

Richmond (City).  The capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy (1861-65) is actually named after another city, Richmond, near London, England.  No biography here. 

Virginia (Commonwealth of).  So far was we can tell, it’s named after Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett), often referred to as the Virgin Queen. 

Now on to Maryland…

Prince George’s County.  The day after my status hearing in Manassas, I had a personal injury trial in PG County District Court, located in the county seat of Upper Marlboro, Maryland.  The county is the Maryland one bordering DC to the east.  Upper Marlboro is fairly small and is just a few blocks deep. I passed by Lower Marlboro, maybe 10-20 miles south, on my way back up from the Solomons Island area on a recent road trip. 

Named after Prince George of Denmark (1653-1708) (also Duke of Cumberland and also buried in Westminster Abbey in London).   His claim to fame was being the husband of Queen Anne of England – the sister of Mary, wife of William of Orange (as in “William & Mary University”).   Thus he was around the same time as Louis XIV of France. 

Montgomery County.  Named after Richard Montgomery (1738-1775, buried in NYC), a Revolutionary War general who died in the war.   County seat is Rockville, and it’s Maryland’s most prosperous county, bordering on DC to the west.  I lived in Montgomery Village from 1969 to 1979 – the first ten years of my life.

On a school trip as a kid we went to the District Court.  Years later I practiced there as an attorney, though a newer building has recently opened up.  I practice in the next door Circuit Court building quite often, in fact filing all my uncontested divorces there.    

Frederick (City and County).  Unclear exactly who the second largest city in Maryland (and its county) is named after, though Calvert (below) is one candidate.

 

Baltimore (City and County).   Name after Cecil Calvert, the Second Baron Baltimore (1605-1675).   He was effectively the governor of Maryland from 1632 to 1675, though unlike Lord Fairfax he stayed in England during this time.

The city itself is by far the largest city in Maryland.  The City and County are separate, with the county buildings, including the District and Circuit Court buildings, in Towson, which is just inside the Baltimore Beltway (695) off York Road.  The city court buildings can be seen now and then in “The Wire”, which not only takes place in Baltimore but is actually filmed there as well.

   

Then you’ve got Sir Lord Baltimore, a British rock band from the early 1970s.  Not sure if they ever actually toured Baltimore, Maryland.   

Maryland.  Named after Henrietta Maria of France (1625-1669), wife of King Charles I, a Stuart monarch executed in the English Civil War, and mother of King Charles II.   We pronounce the state’s name “Marilynd”, like Marilyn Monroe.  I attended the University of Maryland, College Park (main campus) from 1986 to 1990 and graduated with a B.S. in general business and a B.A. in government & politics, a double degree (156 credits) and not a double major.  With my mother’s recent move to Herndon, Virginia from Frederick, Maryland, that means no more relatives living in Maryland anymore. 

Hopefully that should satisfy our curiosity – to the extent anyone cared.  I did.  Did you?

See You In Court

The new
Fairfax County courthouse is now open! Woohoo! Another palace of justice! I get the same feeling going into a newly opened courthouse as I did when I was a kid on the first day of school (and the last day, of course). The new complex is a big rectangle with a tropical botanical garden in the courtyard. The cafeteria is now a 5 star Brazilian churrascaria, with a Vocelli’s thrown in, and the judges are totally awesome. You can even have the pizza delivered to the courtroom, Jeff Spicoli style, in the middle of a trial.

Some of the above may be a little exaggerated.

The top “palace of justice” in this neck of the woods is still the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division (I’ve never seen the ones in other three divisions). Glass, dark wood, escalators, and 10 floors, even a little cafeteria. It’s justice in style and luxury. Too bad I rarely have occasion to go there as I don’t handle federal cases very often (like once every 10 years). Get caught smoking pot on Fort Belvoir, or drive a little too fast on the GW Parkway, and you may get the pleasure of meeting the velvet glove US Attorneys at this place and getting hosed – or better yet, acquitted.

Arlington’s courthouse opened up around 1995 or so. I was just starting out as an attorney when the older courthouse was still up, which had a real 60s CIA-Langley kind of style. The new one is also clean, light and airy, and well polished. It still looks brand new. The Marv Alpert trial was held there. My ex-boss fixed Greta Van Susteren’s cell phone when the media circus had come to town there. Despite its luxury, it lacks a cafeteria, which even Prince William County has. Fairfax’s cafeteria is huge, and tends to be a staging ground for cases and a great place to settle instead of going upstairs to try a case.

Alexandria (pictured above) is one of the few Colonial-retro courthouses around. Inside and out it looks like it belongs in Colonial Williamsburg. You even have the “bar” fences separating the gallery from where the counsel tables are and the bench, with the little swinging doors, so you have to “pass the bar” in the original sense. Remarkably, they handle all their business with just 4 courtrooms for General District Court and 4 for Circuit Court. Fairfax was bursting at the seams with 16 Circuit Court courtrooms.

Prince William County recently expanded its relatively modest facilities, where they get the J&DR Court, the General District Court, and the Circuit Court all into one building, and like Alexandria managed to cope with only 4 courtrooms per section. This was the site of the Bobbitt Trial (Lorena and John), about the only piece of notoriety Prince William ever seemed to achieve. Neither Manassas nor Woodbridge are much to write home about.

Loudoun County (Leesburg) recently opened up their new, and totally confusing, courthouse. Non-Euclidian geometry? Somehow they managed.

Over in Maryland, Monkey (Montgomery) County still has its 70s era main building and a 30s era District Court in Rockville. I went to the District Court as a kid on a school trip, and now – every now and then – practice there as an attorney. The 60s CIA-retro style District Court in Silver Spring was recently bumped in favor of a glass and IKEA wood new one just two blocks away. I noticed that they conduct many of their criminal hearings, when the defendant is in jail, by closed circuit TV, instead of the usual deal of having someone in a jail jumpsuit make a brief appearance, handcuffed, in the courtroom before being led back into the jail. One of the district courts in Baltimore, on Patapsco Ave., uses a similar system and the courthouse also looks the same. If IKEA designed courthouses, they would look like this.

Prince George’s County has been trying to renovate their courthouse, but a huge fire (“Didn’t you hear? There was a huge fire, the court burned down!”) set that back a bit. Upper Marlboro is kind of way out, so I’m not sorry that I don’t go that way often. This was one of the first courts to use computerized bulletin boards to show the docket, instead of the paper lists tacked to the bulletin board. Fairfax has only recently upgraded, but waiting for the docket to scroll screen by screen can be annoying, and less efficient than actually looking up on the paper.

Baltimore City’s court is located downtown, deep in the heart of the financial district. You may have seen it in “Die Hard 4” (supposed to be in DC but obviously in Baltimore) or “…And Justice for All” with Al Pacino.

Baltimore County, on the other hand, has a huge 60s Langley thing going on. It’s all the way up in Towson, somewhat of a long drive. Actually, having cases there helped me later, as I ended up driving past the Recher Theater and seeing where it was. It came in handy when I went to see Tesla there in 2004.

DC. I’m not licensed in DC, so I rarely have occasion to go to any of its courthouses. The Superior Court over on Indiana, is pretty big, and now has all sort of lighted boards there like airline arrival/departure boards. I went there a few times checking up on the DUI case of a PI client’s nemesis. The chairs in the courtroom, instead of being the usual benches, were single buckets which folded up – like in movie theaters. Some of the smaller courtrooms at the Montgomery County Circuit Court have similar seating. The US District Court (for DC) is more like a 30s retro deal, like the Dept of Commerce or the District court in Rockville.
Some of the courts have their own style, but mostly they fall into certain patterns. The continual upgrading and opening of new courthouses makes practice a bit more interesting than it otherwise would be. Not quite SSDD…