page_title: United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan / History
caption_attribution_description: English: River of History Museum, located in the Old Federal Building, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, USA.
context_page_description: The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan is the federal district court with jurisdiction over of the western portion of the state of Michigan, including the entire Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula from Lansing westward.
  Appeals from the Western District of Michigan are taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
  The current acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Michigan is Andrew Byerly Birge, who was appointed on January 20, 2017.
context_section_description: The United States District Court for the District of Michigan was established on July 1, 1836, by 5 Stat. 61, with a single judgeship. The district court was not assigned to a judicial circuit, but was granted the same jurisdiction as United States circuit courts, except in appeals and writs of error, which were the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Due to the Toledo War, a boundary dispute with Ohio, Michigan did not become a state of the union until January 26, 1837. On March 3, 1837, Congress passed an act that repealed the circuit court jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the District of Michigan, assigned the District of Michigan to the Seventh Circuit, and established a U.S. circuit court for the district, 5 Stat. 176.
  On July 15, 1862, Congress reorganized the circuits and assigned Michigan to the Eighth Circuit by 12 Stat. 576, and on January 28, 1863, the Congress again reorganized Seventh and Eight Circuits and assigned Michigan to the Seventh Circuit, by 12 Stat. 637. On February 24, 1863, Congress divided the District of Michigan into the Eastern and the Western districts, with one judgeship authorized for each district, by 12 Stat. 660. The Western District was later further divided into a Southern Division and a Northern Division.
  In the Northern Division, Court was held at the Old Federal Building in Sault Ste. Marie from 1912 until 1941. While the law allows court to be held in Sault Ste. Marie, it no longer is.
caption: Old Federal Building in Sault Ste. Marie served as a courthouse of the Western District of Michigan; the court met there from 1912 until 1941.
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