Carving Out the Rule of Law:

Michigan’s First United States Attorney

1815-1824

President James Madison chose in 1815, as the fi rst United

States Attorney for the Michigan Territory, a man who had been a

pioneer of frontier justice, Solomon Sibley. It is diffi cult today to fully

appreciate the uncertainties and confl icts of two hundred years ago as the

Founding Fathers were creating a nation whose government was unlike

any which had preceded it. One of those areas of confl ict involved the

type of judicial system to construct and, just as importantly, how to

implement due process of law in this wild, infant nation.

Th is developmental process occurred not only in Washington,

where the Federalists and Jeff ersonian Republicans battled over policy

decisions about the court system. On a more practical level for the

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nation and its citizenry, the rule of law and the judicial system developed

in the states and territories, on a case by case basis as the people chosen as

public offi cials strove to apply the laws and legal procedures to particular

fact situations. Th is struggle between policy and practice was particularly

pronounced in Michigan because of its history of occupation by Indian

tribes, the French, the British, and then American settlers whose heritage

was from many diff erent countries. People of such diverse cultural

backgrounds naturally had widely divergent ideas about how the laws

should be applied in the particular situations which directly aff ected

their lives. On the Michigan frontier, no person contributed more to

the evolutionary process of the development of rule of law than Solomon

Sibley.