EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about this topic on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and available with video on YouTube and Lessenberryink.com.
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The People’s Newest Lawyer
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I don’t have a law degree, but I do know something about the legal system and what the job of Michigan attorney general entails. That’s largely because I co-wrote the autobiography of Frank Kelley, who served 37 years in that job, and is the longest-serving attorney general in the nation’s history.
The title of that book is The People’s Lawyer, and that’s how Kelley saw the job and himself. Before he was appointed to the job in 1961, previous attorney generals had seen themselves more as sort of lead attorneys for the state and its elected leaders, and thought their main task was to defend them if and when they got sued. They saw the job as reactive – and they mostly saw it as a stepping stone to higher office.
Nobody was ever Michigan attorney general for longer than five years.
Frank Kelley saw it differently. He made a career of being Michigan attorney general. He reorganized the department and managed to get funding for many more assistant attorneys general. He started the first consumer protection and environmental protection divisions in any AG’s office in the country.
He fought for civil rights, against consumer fraud, utilities that wanted to charge exorbitant rates, and waged many other battles.
After he voluntarily left office in 1999, the next three attorneys general seem largely focused on running for governor. The first one made it; the next two did not, but I was never sure that they saw their job, or representing all the people they served as their main priority. Dana Nessel is, however, different.
She has openly modeled her vision of the job on Frank Kelley’s. We live in a different world today, of course. There was no internet for most of Frank’s career, and hence no cybercrime. The opioid drug epidemic had yet to explode. Fentanyl and crystal meth were not a factor.
And when it came to civil rights, nobody was thinking about extending legal protections to gays and lesbians, let alone transgender folks.
Today, most of the old issues are still there, plus all the new ones I mentioned, and more – and defending the state and its office holders is still part of the job. Dana Nessel knows all this. Oddly enough, what may have most impressed me about her was a case last month where she took a position which at first dismayed me. During the Snyder administration, a computer glitch caused thousands of Michigan workers to be falsely accused of committing fraud against the Unemployment Insurance Agency.
People’s wages were wrongly garnished and lives badly damaged. Last December, Michigan Court of Appeals panel ruled they could seek damages from the state, something that only seemed fair and right to me, and I’d guess to most Democrats. But Attorney General Nessel disagreed, and filed a suit asking the Michigan Supreme Court to overturn that ruling.
Why? Because she knows the federal courts have indicated it’s up to state legislatures to compensate victims in such cases, and federal law always supersedes state law. The stand she took wasn’t popular, but she believed it was right. And that’s exactly the kind of chief law enforcement officer we need.
By the way, I visited Frank Kelley last week in his retirement home in Florida. He told me he thinks General Nessel is doing a great job.
This is Jack Lessenberry. Thanks for watching and listening, and I’ll see you next time.
