Washington, District of Confusion

As a new resident of the District of Columbia, I've been reading a bit on how the court system in D.C. works and the history of the D.C. courts. (Isn't that what everyone does when they move to a new jurisdiction?) One thing that I read today that struck me as interesting is that Congress did not create the Metropolitan police until the Civil War period. Before that, D.C. was under-policed. And back then, there wasn't really a municipal code or code of statutory laws enacted by Congress to govern the District; instead, D.C. courts applied the laws of Maryland in the part of D.C. ceded by Maryland ("the county of Washington") and the laws of Virginia in Alexandria county (ceded back to Virginia in the 1840s). That means that District residents were subject to different civil and criminal laws depending on which side of the Potomac they happened to be on, despite the fact that both Washington county and Alexandria county had a common government. A common government, but two sets of law--that must have caused some "choice of laws" headaches.

Here's a citation, for those of you who like that sort of thing, Erwin C. Surrency, History of the Federal Courts 427 (2d ed. 2001).