When Dana Nessel took the oath of office on January 1, 2019, she gave a description of her mission that is worth mentioning. She avoided discussing her political aspirations or legal successes. She discussed the individuals. In particular, about returning the Department of Attorney General to its constituents. That promise is surprisingly straightforward, but it’s more difficult to fulfill than it seems.
After winning the election in November 2018, Nessel—a former criminal prosecutor and civil rights lawyer—became Michigan’s 54th Attorney General. She entered a position that most people in Michigan wouldn’t be able to adequately explain. The 1963 Michigan Constitution limits the attorney general’s term to two four-year terms. The attorney general is the fourth-ranking official in state government and is elected statewide alongside the governor. Serving as the chief law enforcement officer, advising state agencies, and representing the state in civil and criminal cases are all part of the job description. It’s quite a bit. For the majority of people, it’s also invisible until it isn’t.
The office’s aggressive involvement in national discussions has made Nessel’s tenure more difficult to overlook. Her office has launched a number of legal challenges against federal policies that she and her team believe are illegal since the Trump Administration took office again in January 2025. The Department established a Federal Actions Tracker, a publicly available tool that keeps track of ongoing federal lawsuits and their effects on Michigan citizens, in order to monitor these actions. It’s a surprisingly sensible decision. The majority of government court cases take place behind closed doors. This one is being recorded in almost real time.
Nessel seems to have always grasped the difference between the authority of the law and the public’s confidence. She developed a career fighting for civil rights prior to taking office; this is the kind of work that takes place in courtrooms where real people have real stakes rather than in conference rooms. Her upbringing appears to have influenced the way she manages the AG’s office, encouraging accessibility in less glamorous ways.
The most obvious example of this is likely the Clean Slate initiative. Nessel contributed to the drafting of Michigan’s 2019 expungement law, which has since allowed more than a million citizens to have past convictions removed from their records. According to the office, a past error shouldn’t dictate your future. The specifics of the policy, such as eligibility requirements, scope, and implementation, can be debated, but the magnitude of the impact is difficult to dispute. A million individuals is a big number.
Additionally, the office has divisions that deal with financial crimes, healthcare fraud, consumer protection, and child support enforcement. These teams deal with complaints from locals who have nowhere else to go every year. It’s meticulous, unglamorous work. People who deal with predatory lenders or medical billing fraud in places like Flint or Grand Rapids care about things that don’t make headlines.
The AG’s authority is quite explicit in Michigan law. When called upon, the legislature, the governor, and other state officials must receive legal opinions from the attorney general under MCL 14.32. As the chief law enforcement officer, the office also has common law authority, which includes the capacity to designate special agents to support enforcement. Most people are unaware of the scope of that mandate.
It’s difficult not to believe that the position was always capable of greater visibility than it had been granted, given how this office has changed under Nessel. Whether you agree with her political views or not, she has made the attorney general’s office feel like it belongs to the public, which it has always done both legally and practically.
