Object Type: Folder
In Folder: Attorney General, Michigan
The Attorney General is mandated by law (MCL 14.30) to produce a report of all the official business done by the department over a two-year period. This series contains the biennial reports published by the Attorney Generals Department from 1963-2022. These reports typically include the following information: list of all previous Attorneys General, register of the department staff, biographical sketches of all Assistant Attorneys General, overview of the organizational structure of the department, list of prosecuting attorneys from each county, formal opinions, division reports, reports of prosecutions (by division), and numerical/subject indexes for formal opinions. The contents of these reports vary slightly over time and have grown to include elements such as opinion policies and lists of other previous executive level staff.
The Attorney General is required by law to provide legal opinions regarding questions of law to the legislature, governor, auditor general, treasurer, or any other state officer (MCL 14.32). The Attorney General prioritizes granting opinion requests that affect or clarify the operation of state government. These opinions can take the form of a formal opinion, letter opinion, or informational letter but formal opinions are considered to address questions significant enough to the state's jurisprudence to warrant publication. Formal opinions published by the Attorney General are made up of a header containing keywords, subjects, headnote, opinion number, date opinion was issued, entity or individual requesting an opinion, and the body of the opinion itself. These formal opinions come directly from the biennial report in which they were published but were split out into individual pdfs for ease of research use.
This series contains compiled indexes covering formal opinions published in the Attorney General's biennial reports dating 1970-2000. These indexes are organized first alphabetically by subject heading then list the assigned opinion number, the date range of the biennial report it originally appeared in, and then the page number within that report.
