Book Review: Quinn, F. (2002). Courthouse at Indian Creek. Santa Anna, CA: Seven Locks Press. 289 pp

• Published date: 01 June 2007
• Date: 01 June 2007
• Author: Taunya Lovell Banks
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016807300508
• Subject Matter: Articles

Book Reviews

Quinn, F. (2002). Courthouse at Indian Creek. Santa Anna, CA:

Seven Locks Press. 289 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016807300508

Despite frequent trips from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., I never wanted to visit the fed-

eral courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, until I read the first chapter of Frederick Quinn’s

book Courthouse at Indian Creek. His description of the courthouse’s serene physical setting

belies the chaos surrounding the 38-year battle to create the Southern Division of Maryland’s

federal district court. Quinn’s 15-page discussion of the politics behind the establishment of

the Southern Division and the construction of the courthouse is worthy of a book in itself.

The courthouse is located at Indian Creek (pronounced “crick”), an ancient trade route

and seasonal gathering place for the indigenous people in the mid-Atlantic region. Indian

Creek is located in Prince George’s County, home to the highest concentration of affluent

Black Americans in the nation. A suburb of the nation’s capital, and part of a wetland area

once surrounded by tobacco farms, today Indian Creek is threatened by encroaching devel-

opment, a concern of local environmentalists. Much like the courthouse on its banks, Indian

Creek is a place of contrasts and conflicts.

Quinn, a prodigious writer and former Foreign Service officer, is the author of numerous

nonfiction books on international policy, including the well-received Democracy at Dawn:

Notes from Poland and Points East (1998). An Episcopal priest, he also is the author of sev-

eral books about religious ethics. His interest in the American legal system is long-standing.

Quinn edited The Federalist Papers Reader (1993) and was the international coordinator for

the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, working closely with then–Supreme Court Chief

Justice Warren Burger. As he mentions in the opening chapter, judicial reform around the

world is another area of interest.

Quinn’s goal in Courthouse at Indian Creek was to write a book that gives readers insights

about the workings of the American judicial system while capturing “the human drama of the

court and the frank views of the judges” (p. xi). His interviews with the three federal judges

in the Southern District, Peter Messitte, Deborah Chasanow, and Alexander Williams, Jr.,

achieve this goal. They put a human face on the judiciary and expose the increasingly varied

routes to the federal bench. Fortunately for the reader, the judges, a White man, a White

woman, and a Black man, represent a far more diverse federal bench than exists in many parts

of the country.

Unfortunately, much of the book (168 pages) is devoted to a discussion of criminal and

civil cases heard by the judges. Given his catholic interests and past experiences, a discus-

sion of 13 “sample” cases heard during the first 5 years of the courthouse’s existence seems

promising. But Quinn’s discussion of the cases fails for several reasons.

The first is structural. The case narratives in part II come before interviews with the

judges, which appear in part III. Thus, the reader is deprived of important contextual infor-

mation needed to better understand Quinn’s discussion of the cases. Without this informa-

tion, certain aspects of the cases, such as how each judge’s personality, experiences, and

philosophy influence what happens in the case, are lost.

Similarly informative, but misplaced, is Quinn’s discussion of the Court of Appeals for the

Fourth Circuit and his interviews with the federal magistrates that appear in part IV, titled

175

Criminal Justice Review

Volume 32 Number 2

June 2007 175-176

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