new york legislative history research

Legislative History Research Guide : New York State Legislative Research

• Federal Legislative Research
• New York State Legislative Research
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• Administrative Regulations

Current and Historical New York Legislative Documents

Historical  New York Governor's Bill Jackets (Legislative Histories of New York Laws): Bill jackets contain memoranda and letters associated with a bill, but not committee reports, hearings, or debates. 

• New York State Assembly
• New York State Senate New York State Senate - OpenLegislation (current): Bill Search (keyword, sponsor, committee) Session Transcripts Live coverage of Senate proceedings.
• New York State Archives This is the official repository of New York State Government records having permanent legal and historical value. Some of the legislative, judicial and executive agency records it holds are available on the website, along with exhibits and photographs.
• New York State Archives: Bill, Veto, and Recall Jackets Governor's bill jackets have been digitized beginning in 1995.
• New York State Library Attorneys who are New York State residents and are admitted to practice in New York State are eligible to receive a NYS Library Attorney Borrower's Card. These borrower’s cards begin with a "P" number. Click here for additional resource description available with this card.
• New York Legislative History: Web Resources University at Buffalo, Charles B. Sears Law Library

Legislative Research Sources

• New York State Legislature
• New York State Legislative Process: Glossary of Frequently Used Phrases (New York City Bar) - defines unusual phrases such as "enacting clause stricken," used "when the main sponsor of a bill removes their support for the bill and the title has been deleted. Bill is considered dead unless another legislator decides to sponsor the bill."
• The Legislative History of a New York State Law: A Tutorial and Guide to Library Sources (New York State Library).
• New York State Legislative Intent (New York State Library).
• New York Legislative Service, Inc. Prepared legislative histories (fee-based).
• New York Legislative History Sourcebook First legislative history union list prepared for the Law Library Association of Greater New York.
• New York Legal Research Library (HeinOnline) Full texts of historical New York Session Laws.
• The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform (2004)
• Unfinished Business: New York State Legislative Reform (2006)
• Still Broken: New York State Legislative Reform 2008 Update (2009)

General New York Government Sources

• NY.gov Official website of the New York State Government.
• New York State Assembly Official website of NY State Assembly; search for NY legislation.
• New York State Senate
• New York Governor's Office
• New York State Agencies Links to agency websites and publications.
• New York State Documents A collection of New York State documents and information, many of which are available in digital format.
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• Last Updated: Jan 22, 2024 2:33 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.law.pace.edu/legislativehistory

New York State Legislative History

The purpose of this research guide, reference resources.

• Document Types
• Overview of Process
• Bills / Session Laws / Codes
• Bill Jackets
• Senate & Assembly Documents
• The Law Revision Commission & Public Hearings
• Documents by Format and Database

The purpose of a legislative history is to try to determine the intent of the legislature enacting the law.  In other words, what is the issue the legislature is addressing and why does the legislature deal with the issue in the manner that they do.

Our Law Library holds many but not all of the materials that may make up a legislative history. This is why the focus of this guide is to explain what the researcher can do here.

The basic steps for compiling a New York legislative history; points to remember; and the materials/documents used and available at the Law Library are on the " Definitions " and " Overview of Process " pages.

See the Reference Resources box to the right for resources that provide more complete discussions on compiling a New York state legislative history.  These resources mention materials we do not have and provide guidance for finding them. 

Or, for other guides search google: research guide New York legislative history

• Gibson's New York Legal Research Guide, 3rd edition / William H. Manz Law Reading Room, Law Reserve, Law Ready Reference KFN5074 .G53 2004 Chapter 5, pages 96-112 Highly recommended, the author sets out and describes the materials gathered for a legislative history, and explains the value of each for determining legislative intent. There is good reason why the law library has 4 copies of this book.
• New York Legal Research / Elizabeth G. Adelman, Suzanne E. Rowe Law Ready Reference KFN5074 .A34 2008
• Legislative Intent in New York State: Materials, Cases and Annotated Bibliography / Robert A. Carter. Law Classified KFN5074 .C37 1981
• New York State Library Legislative Intent
• New York State Library Legislative History Tutorial
• New York Legislative Service, Inc. New York Legislative Service, Inc. is exclusively devoted to researching legislative intent and current legislation for New York State and New York City.

• Two New Subcollections Added to New York Legal Research Library HeinOnline’s New York Legal Research Library is dedicated to the history, study, practice, and development of law in the state of New York. This specialized database offers unprecedented coverage of current and historical material spread over more than 15 specialized subcollections dating back to prestatehood. From the reports and opinions of the New York Attorney General, the New York State Register, New York Tax Cases, and Session Laws to New York law journals, constitutions, and prestatehood materials, this specialized legal research library offers the legal resources necessary to understand the historical development of rules, regulations, laws, and policies in New York State.
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• Last Updated: Jan 3, 2024 11:25 AM
• URL: https://libguides.law.hofstra.edu/new_york_state_legislative_history

New York State Legal Research: Legislative History

• Secondary Sources
• Regulations
• Legislative History
• Current Awareness

Legislative history attempts to discern the intent of the legislature when making law and is one of the more challenging areas of legal research. Fortunately, the New York State Library has produced a comprehensive guide . 

Key Concepts

• Bills can be introduced in either legislative house. Bills arising in the New York State Assembly carry an "a" prefix. Bills arising in the New York State Senate carry an "s" prefix. Every bill is assigned a number (e.g., a2009 or s1509). Additional letters appended to the end of bills represent subsequent amendments (e.g., a2009a or s1509b).

Sponsor's Memoranda

• When bills are introduced, they are often accompanied by sponsor's memoranda (explanations of purpose). Sponsor's memoranda can contain summaries of provisions and justifications. When they are present, they are a valuable source of legislative intent.

Bill Jackets

• After bills have been passed by both houses, they are sent to the governor. Bill jackets can contain sponsor's memoranda, counsel's statements, state agency positions, comments, and opinions. However, they never contain transcripts of hearings. If the governor rejects a bill, a veto memorandum is often attached.

New York State Legislature

The New York State Legislature is composed of two houses:  the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. The website contains bills and other legislative materials from 1995-present. The website is not very intuitive or aesthetically pleasing, but it can be searched the furthest back in time.

• To search for a bill, select "Bill No." from the dropdown menu. Along the top of the screen, you will see options for status, text, summary, sponsor's memo, and voting. Make sure to check the box for sponsor's memo.

Chapter Laws

• To search for a chapter law (an enacted bill), select "Chapter No." from the dropdown menu. Along the top of the screen, you will see options for status, text, summary, sponsor's memo, and voting. Make sure to check the box for sponsor's memo.

New York State Assembly

The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature. The website contains bills and other legislative materials from 1999-present. Although it does not go as far back in time as the Legislature's website, it is easier to use and contains more information (e.g., videos and transcripts).

• If you already know the bill number, enter it and click search. Along the top of the screen, you will see options for summary, actions, committee votes, floor votes, memo, text, LFIN, and chamber video/transcript. Make sure to check the box for memo. If you don't already know the bill number, click on the link for Advanced Search. You can narrow your search by term, keyword, committee, etc.

Videos and Transcripts

• You can narrow your search by session proceedings, committee hearings, events, or keyword.

New York State Senate

The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature. The website contains bills and other legislative materials from 2009-present. One of its main advantages is that you can search for public hearing transcripts.

• To search for a bill, filter the content type by bills. If you already know the bill number, enter it in the box marked "print no" and click search. If you don't already know the bill number, you can narrow your search by session, keyword, committee, etc.

Public Hearing Transcripts

• To search for a public hearing transcript, filter the content type by public hearing transcripts. You can narrow your search by month, year, and keyword.

New York State Archives

The New York State Archives is the official repository of bill jackets sent to the governor. It contains bill jackets from 1995-2020. For bill jackets prior to 1995, try emailing [email protected] .

• To search for a bill jacket, click "view all," and filter by year. You can narrow your search by bill, chapter law, or keyword.

New York Legislative Service

The New York Legislative Service publishes the New York State Legislative Annual, a yearly compilation of legislative histories of each chapter law, veto, proposed constitutional amendment, and ballot proposal from 1946-present. However, the library only offers print access.

• New York State Legislative Annual

Call No. KFN5014 .N39

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• Last Updated: Jan 22, 2024 9:02 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.lawnet.fordham.edu/newyorkstatelegalresearch

Legislative History: New York State and Federal at NYPL: Federal

• New York State

Federal Legislative History

Many documents are generated in the course of passage of Federal legislation. It helps to understand the legislative process, as documents are generated at each step.

• A bill is introduced to the House or the Senate, and is assigned a bill number . It is assigned to committee, which decides whether or not to refer the bill to the full House or Senate for debate and a vote. Most bills die in committee without further action. 
• If the committee considers the bill, it will hold Hearings to gather information and opinions on the proposed legislation.
• The committee may report the legislation out of committee for consideration by the full House or Senate. If this occurs, they write a Committee Report , discussing the purpose, scope, etc. of the legislation. This is the most important document for purposes of legislative intent.  
• The bill will then be debated by the the full House or Senate, which is recorded in the Congressional Record . 
• The full House or Senate votes on the bill.
• If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber, and the same procedure is followed. 
• If both bodies pass a bill, it may go to a Conference Committee to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions, generating a  Conference Report .
• The bill then goes to the President to be signed into law or vetoed. If it becomes law, it is assigned a Public Law number , and is published as a session law in United States Statutes at Large .   

Legislative history documents are generally keyed to the session law, as published in Statutes at Large; key pieces of information are the Public Law number, the Statutes at Large citation, and the bill number.

If you start with a United States Code citation, look to the bottom of the code section to the Credits or History Note, where you will find citations to the original enacting legislation and any subsequent amendments. Amendments will each have their own legislative history. 

Acts by Popular Name

Public laws are often know by their "popular name" (e.g. the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Securities Exchange Act of 1934). It is possible to search ProQuest Congressional by popular name, but it can be difficult to pinpoint the correct piece of legislation, and it is generally most effective to search by session law citation. Use popular names tables to find citations. 

Library Resources: 

• WestLaw : Available for use onsite at the library. To find the Popular Names Table: From the home page, click on the Federal Materials tab. Then click on United States Code Annotated (USCA) . Find the  Popular Names Table - USCA in the column on the far right under Tools and Resources .
• United States Code Annotated (USCA) : The last volumes of the index to the print copy of US statutes includes a Popular Names Table. The index to the United States Code (USC) also includes a Popular Names Table. 

Web Resources:

• POPULAR NAME TOOL - Office of the Law Revision Counsel
• Table of Popular Names - Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School)

Session Laws: 

Session laws are legislation passed in a session of Congress into law by and signed by the President, published in chronological order, in the print publication United states Statutes at Large . As mentioned above, finding the session law citation is key to finding legislative history. Federal session laws are cited by Public Law number (eg Public Law 73-291; 73 indicates the 73rd Congress), and Statutes at Large citation (eg 48 Stat. 881; vol. 48, p. 881 of Statutes at Large). You may need to refer to the session laws to see the text of the law as originally passed, or track changes in subsequent amendments. Text of session laws can be found in ProQuest Congressional. In addition:

Online: 

• Statutes at Large - Library of Congress (1st-81st Congress; 1789-1951)
• United States Statutes at Large - govinfo (82nd-104th Congress; 1951-2013)
• United States Statutes at Large

ProQuest Congressional Publications

ProQuest Congressional Publications  is the most important library resource for Congressional documents. Beginning in 1969, it contains compiled legislative histories, with citations and links to relevant documents, generally with full text. You can simply search by public law number (eg. "pl 101-336").

You can also search by public law number prior to 1969; however, the results may not be as comprehensive, though results generally include bills, the House or Senate reports, and text of the act. 

House and Senate Reports

House and Senate reports are published in the Congressional Serial Set . If ProQuest Congressional does not prove a full text report, you can search for them in  Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980 . When possible, do a Publication Search .

Locate the report number in ProQuest Congressional. Enter the Congress and document number in Congressional Serial Set. 

CONGRESS.GOV

congress.gov provides House and Senate reports since 1995:

• House of Representatives

The library holds to United States Congressional Serial Set in print going back to 1817. Holdings are broken into several catalog records. To obtain the correct volume for a House or Senate report, you will Serial Set Vol. No. and Session Vol. No. as shown in Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set (see above).

United States Congressional Serial Set

Hearings can be found in ProQuest Congressional Documents. They are included in the precompiled legislative histories of laws passed after 1969. They can also be found for earlier laws. However they may not be keyed directly to legislation. To find them, you can do a key word and date search in an Advanced Search: 

CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings Index

The library also holds a print index to Congressional hearings, covering the years 1833-1969. This keys to the microfiche set:  CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings .

Other Materials: 

• United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (USCCAN) Call Number: JBM 92-624 Publication Date: 1952-1997,2000-2010 An unofficial version of Congressional session laws, published by Westlaw, including the text of public laws, and texts of select committee reports.
• Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories : A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books, 1st Congress-94th Congress by Nancy P. Johnson (Compiled by) Call Number: M-10 4891 no. 14 ISBN: 0837701120 Publication Date: 1979-01-01 Identifies sources in which to find particular legislative histories.
• Union List of Legislative Histories : 47th Congress, 1881-101st Congress, 1990 by Law Librarians' Society of the District of Columbia Staff Call Number: JBE 12-1167 ISBN: 0837727057 Publication Date: 1991-01-01 This publication provides the user with a listing of the libraries in the Washington, D.C. area that have compiled in-house legislative histories or have acquired published histories for particular laws of the United States. The 1993 Supplement updates the sixth edition of the publication through the 102nd Congress (1992).

• Congress and Law-Making: Researching the Legislative Process by Robert U. Goehlert; Fenton S. Martin Call Number: IBZ 89-19666 ISBN: 0874365090 Publication Date: 1988-11-01 This reference work for law students is a handbook for researching the major sources of information covering the US Congress. The work describes how to trace a bill's passage through Congress & how to locate information about specific legislators.
• Legislative Reference Checklist : the Key to Legislative Histories from 1789-1903 by Eugene Nabors Call Number: SASB - S7 - General Research - Room 315 *R-SIBL KF49 .L43 1982 ISBN: 0837709083 Publication Date: 1982-12-01

A search of the catalog will also turn up legislative histories of individual pieces of legislation in book form. 

• How Federal Judges Use Legislative History - Essay (Journal of Legislation)
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• Last Updated: Mar 21, 2023 1:15 PM
• URL: https://libguides.nypl.org/legislativehistory

New York State Legislative History Research: Codes & Session Laws

• Introduction

Codes & Session Laws

• Bills & Bill Tracking
• Hearings & Reports
• Debates & Journals
• Bill Jackets
• Westlaw: New York Legislative History
• Legislative Documents
• NYS Law Revision Commission & Judicial Council/Conference Reports
• Brennan Center Reports
• Commentary on Legislation

To begin to compile a legislative history of a New York State statute, you first need to find the law's citation in the session laws or, if the law is currently in effect, to find the law's citation in the code.  In either source, you can find the year of the law's enactment and its chapter number.

• McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York (KFN 5030 .A4 M15)  Laws currently in force in New York State arranged in 64 titles or subjects. Text of the statute includes the year of enactment and the chapter number.  Annotated with references to cases and historical notes.  Updated with annual pocket parts.  Digital version available in Westlaw: New York Statutes and Court Rules .
• New York Consolidated Laws Service (KFN 5030 .A4 L33)  Laws currently in force in New York State.  Text of the statute includes the year of enactment and the chapter number.  Includes case annotations, historical notes, annual pocket parts and advance sheets.  An additional feature of this set is the inclusion of forms for some statutes.  Digital version available in Lexis+: New York Consolidated Laws Service .

Session Laws:

• Laws of the State of New York (KFN 5025 .A23)  Official version - currently prepared by the New York State Bill Drafting Commission. Published annually.  BLS Library has print vols. from  1785-1977 (incomplete) and print vols. from 1988- 2010 (received as a New York State depository item) .  Also available in BLS Library in microfiche (KFN5025 .A23 (MICRO)) back to 1691.  Digital version available in HeinOnline's Session Laws Library , described below.
• HeinOnline > Session Laws Library > New York   Coverage: 1691-2022, includes the New York Colony's Acts (1691-1775).
• McKinney's Session Laws of New York (KFN 5025 .M3)  BLS Library has 1954 to date. Unofficial version published by Thomson/West.  Two volumes per year; volume one contains the text of new laws arranged by chapter number; volume two contains the governor's annual message, executive orders and approval memoranda.  Digital version from current year available in Westlaw: New York Enacted Legislation (Session Laws) .
• New York Consolidated Laws Service: Session Laws (KFN 5025 .L42)  BLS Library has 1976 to date.  Unofficial version published by LexisNexis.  Two volumes per year; volume one contains the text of new laws arranged by chapter number; volume two contains the governor's annual message, executive orders and approval memoranda.  Digital version of New York Consolidated Laws Service Session Laws (2022) available in LexisNexis Digital Library.
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• Last Updated: Jan 11, 2024 4:11 AM
• URL: https://guides.brooklaw.edu/NYS_legislative_history_research

• University Libraries
• Research Guides
• New York Legislative History
• Web Resources

New York Legislative History: Web Resources

• The Resources

WEB RESOURCES -- NY LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

• ​ Outline: Steps for Compiling a NYS Legislative History
• New York Legislative Bill Information   Bills & resolutions, consolidated laws, chapter laws, constitution, vetoes & budget bills. 1995+
• New York Assembly Homepage   The Legislative Information System provides keyword access to Assembly bills. Legislative memoranda, summary and actions on bills, and recorded votes; Assembly calendar and committee agendas. Also includes text of the State Constitution, laws of New York including newly signed Chapter Laws, and selected reports presented to the Assembly.
• New York Senate Homepage   Keyword searchable file of both Senate and Assembly bills and resolutions. Senate rules, legislative schedule, committee memberships, public hearing schedules, Senate reports, Senate e-mail addresses and biographies. Laws of New York, NY Constitution, Chapter Laws, Governor's veto messages.
• Legislative Intent  
• Bill, Recall, Veto Jackets
• New York State Archives  
• New York State Government Information Locator   ILS is an online directory that identifies official information sources of NYS government and provides assistance on how to access those sources. ILS uses the Internet to gain access to electronic publications, databases, documents and records produced by State agencies, the State Legislature and the State Judicial system.
• New York State Unified Court System  
• Access points for NYS government entities.
• New York State Bar Association  

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New York Legal Research Guide

New york legal research: introduction, new york legal research at harvard: sources, new york government & legal system, secondary sources for new york legal research, new york jurisprudence, new york treatises and practice materials in lexis and westlaw, nolo legal research materials for new york, creating statutory law in new york, new york legislative research: internet sources, new york legislative research in subscription databases, historical and superseded new york statutes and codes, new york legislative history research, researching new york administrative law, new york case law, historical new york case law reporters, caselaw access project (http://case.law), new york state court dockets and filings, new york jury instructions, legal forms for new york, westlaw's practical law research tool, lexis practice advisor research tool, new york state bar, continuing legal education in new york, getting help from a research librarian.

This guide discusses the New York legal system, provides instruction on researching New York law, and explains how Harvard Law School affiliates can access New York legal materials.

The process for researching New York law is the same as that for researching the law of other U.S. states.  However, there are some New York-specific secondary sources, including treatises and practice guides, that are frequently used by practicing attorneys.  Those sources are highlighted below.

This guide is co-owned by Jennifer Allison and Catherine Biondo .   Feel free to contact either of us with questions or feedback.

The Harvard Law Library has New York legal materials both in both print and electronic formats. 

In the Harvard Library catalog, Hollis, many materials related to New York law have been assigned the Library of Congress subject heading "Law -- New York" -- click the link to view these items in Hollis.

Print materials for New York law are located in the 4th floor reading room.  Their call number range is KFN5000 -- KFN6199.

Westlaw and Lexis both offer access to primary and secondary law resources for New York law.  For both of these databases, click the link to New York in the homepage's State materials menu to view a list of the full collection of the available New York sources. 

The law library offers access to Westlaw and Lexis for HLS affiliates.  In addition, a public Westlaw terminal is available in the library for anyone with access to the library to use.  For more information about library access, visit the Access Services homepage .

View the  State Government Structure guide from the New York State Division of the Budget for a brief overview of the New York state government.

The Governor heads New York's executive branch, which includes high-level state officials and the state's administrative agencies. 

Like the federal government, New York's legislative branch features a bi-cameral legislature: the Senate and the Assembly . An identical version of a bill must pass in both the Senate and the Assembly and be signed by the Governor to become law.

Both of the executive and legislative branch offices are located in the state capital, Albany.

The organizational infrastructure of the judiciary is called the New York State Unified Court System .  The court system in New York is a bit confusing, so the state's website provides both a Court Directory and an  administrative structure chart , with hyperlinked references to the courts at all levels. 

In New York, the highest level state court is called the Court of Appeals .  General trial courts are called "Supreme Courts" in New York, and they are categorized geographically ( New York City Courts , and Courts Outside New York City ).  There are also four intermediate-level courts throughout the state, each of which go by the name of " Supreme Court Appellate Division ."

New York attorneys have many state-specific legal treatises and practice guides at their disposal, including New York Jurisprudence , a multi-volume encyclopedia dedicated exclusively to New York law.  These items are described below.

Although the law library has some of these items in its print collection, Lexis and Westlaw are your best options for accessing these materials, as they are frequently updated and searchable.

New York Jurisprudence is a multi-volume legal encyclopedia focusing on substantive and procedural aspects of New York civil and criminal law. It is currently in its second edition, and may be referenced as "NY Jur 2d."

The print version of this resource consists of a collection of more than 100 volumes, organized alphabetically by topic, and an index.  Although the law library has it in print on the shelf in the reading room, it has not been updated since 2008.  Therefore, Harvard Law affiliates should access New York Jurisprudence electronically through Westlaw or Lexis. 

From the Westlaw homepage, click Secondary Sources > New York > Texts & Treatises > New York Jurisprudence .

From the Lexis homepage, click New York , then click New York Jurisprudence 2d under Secondary Materials -- Top Sources .

In both databases, this source can be browsed by clicking links in the table of contents, or searched using the search box at the top of the screen.

Each encyclopedia entry includes a brief description, as well as references to relevant case law, statutes, and other secondary sources, including West's Key Number Digest, American Law Reports, American Jurisprudence, and Corpus Juris Secundum.

Lexis and Westlaw provide access to electronic versions of legal treatises and practice guides that cover substantive and procedural law in New York. A selection of general practice guides from Lexis and Westlaw is listed below.  To access a source listed below, type its name in the search box of the homepage of its respective database.

Note: Lexis is the exclusive electronic provider of all guides published by Matthew Bender .

• Encyclopedia of New York Causes of Action: Elements and Defenses
• New York Civil Practice Series -- includes practice-oriented treatises on the CPLR (New York Civil Procedure Laws and Rules), family court proceedings, matrimonial actions, and the EPTL (Estates, Powers, and Trusts Law).  The CPLR guide is also referred to as "Weinstein, Korn and Miller."
• New York Criminal Practice
• New York Evidence Courtroom Manual
• New York Practice Guide Series -- multi-treatise series covering business/commercial, domestic relations, negligence, probate and estate administration, and real estate
• New York Trial Guide
• NY CLS Civil Practice Annual
• Carmody-Wait Cyclopedia of New York Practice with Forms -- includes materials for both civil and criminal practice.
• New York Evidence Proof of Cases
• New York Practice Series (West) -- includes practice-oriented coverage of 24 areas of substantive and procedural New York law.
• Siegel's New York Practice
• Village Town & District Courts in New York

(Note: Bloomberg's main New York treatise is James Publishing's New York Civil Practice Before Trial.)

Nolo is a company that publishes materials about the law and legal research for non-lawyers.  In addition to its numerous print guides, the Nolo website includes many articles about New York law.  To view a list of them, run this Google search .

The procedure for enacting legislation in New York is the same as that for the federal government: a bill is introduced in either the House or Assembly, and then it is debated and voted on.  Once both legislative chambers have passed the same version of the bill, the governor can either sign it (and it becomes law) or veto it (it goes back to the legislature, which has the option to override the veto).

The New York City Bar Association has created an excellent Glossary for the New York State Legislative Process , which is freely available online.    

There are several options for accessing New York legislation for free online:

• The New York Legislature maintains a public database of all laws currently in force in the state.  This database can be browsed or searched at  http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/lawssrch.cgi?NVLWO :.  
• The Consolidated Laws of New York are available through the New York State Senate's website at  https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CONSOLIDATED .
• New York Consolidated laws are also available through Findlaw ( https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/ ) and Justia ( https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/ ).  The Justia site has historical versions of the consolidated laws going back to 2006.

In Westlaw, New York statutory law is available through the New York Statutes & Court Rules collection.  Content from McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York Annotated  is provided for each statutory section.

New York statutes in Lexis are available through the All New York Statutes & Legislation collection.  For each statutory section, Lexis provides content from the New York Consolidated Laws Service .

New York statutes in both databases are annotated , which means that the statutory text and references to related primary and secondary materials are provided for each statutory section.

Options for researching historical New York statutes include the following:

• Westlaw's New York Statutes Annotated -- Historical collection goes back to 1987.
• HeinOnline's New York collection in its State Statutes: A Historical Archive  library has statutory compilations dating back to the mid-1700s.

The New York State Library has created a free online tutorial for researching legislative history for New York statutes.  

An important element of legislative history research that is unique to New York is the availability of  bill jackets  for enacted laws.  These contain the text of memoranda, letters, and other materials related to the law that were produced by the legislature and the executive during the legislative process.  Bill jackets for selected years have been digitized and are freely available online through the New York State Archives' Legislative Bill and Veto Jackets Digital Collection .

Legislative history research for New York statutes can also be done on Lexis and Westlaw (in both databases, access these materials through the New York statutes page).  In Westlaw , bill jackets and related materials are available through its New York Legislative History collection.  In Lexis , materials of this type are included in the New York Legislative Bill History collection.

Detailed information about New York administrative law research is beyond the scope of this guide.  Research guides published by other libraries provide information about administrative law research in the state, including:

• New York Administrative Law: Basic Resources (University of Buffalo)
• Administrative Law Research Guide: New York State and New York City (Brooklyn Law School)

The New York Law Reporting Bureau provides free online access to the  New York Official Reports , which includes decisions from the Court of Appeals, the Appellate Division, the Appellate Term, and the Supreme Court .   Date coverage is from 1956 to the present, and a slip opinion service (providing accessing to opinions for recently-decided cases) is also available.  Although this resource is maintained by Westlaw, citator service (KeyCite) is not provided. 

Visit  http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/Decisions.shtml .  

HeinOnline's State Reports: A Historical Archive includes a large collection of historical reporters for New York state courts.  Coverage of the mid-to-late 1800s, from courts throughout the state, is particularly strong in this collection.

Through its Caselaw Access Project (CAP), the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab (LIL) has digitized all U.S. federal and state case law published through 2018 -- roughly 40 million pages of court decisions. 

CAP includes the text of more than 1,100,000 cases for New York courts.

This collection was launched publicly in October 2018 and is available online through  https://case.law/ .  The data is accessible through an open-source API and as bulk-data downloads.  

For more information about CAP, email  [email protected] .

To find New York state court filings in Bloomberg, click Dockets on the homepage. You can then configure the search page to search New York court dockets.  Coverage varies by court. 

Westlaw's New York page includes links to its New York State Dockets library, as well as collections of New York Trial Court Documents and New York Briefs.

HeinOnline's New York Court of Appeals Records and Briefs library provides digitized access to briefs filed in New York's highest court.  Coverage is from October 2003 to the present, updated monthly.  Older records and briefs from this series, going back to 1975, are available in the law library's microfilm collection .

LLMC , a subscription database, provides access to historical records and briefs for the New York Court of Appeals (1847-1956).  On the LLMC homepage, click the Search Collections link on the right side, then click the Records and Briefs tab, and New York.

Pattern jury instructions can be a helpful tool for understanding statutory law because they are created with a non-lawyer audience in mind.

The nycourts.gov website includes a collection of general applicability jury instructions , organized alphabetically by topic and downloadable as Word, Word Perfect, and PDF documents.  These documents are annotated, with citations to relevant statutory provisions and case law.

New York jury instructions are also available through Westlaw and Lexis, linked to on the New York state law collection page in each database.

Why reinvent the wheel?  Sample forms that adhere specifically to New York's legal requirements are available for you to download, edit, and save through both Westlaw and Lexis.

From the Westlaw home page, access sample legal forms by clicking State Materials > New York > New York Form Finder .    

From the Lexis Advance home page, click New York > All New York Forms . 

In both of these form pages, you can search by keyword or browse by source.  In Westlaw, you can also browse by topic.

The Practical Law feature in Westlaw provides practitioner-oriented content, including standard documents and clauses, checklists, current awareness sources, and more.  New York-specific materials are included.  Practical Law is a popular resource in many law firms, so law students who plan to practice in New York should become familiar with it.

To access this resource, from the Westlaw homepage, click State Materials > New York > Practical Law New York .

From the Practical Law New York page, you can browse by practice area (Commercial Transactions, Corporate / M&A, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Real Estate, and Trusts & Estates) or by resource type.

The Practice Advisor tool in LexisAdvance (sometimes called Lexis Practice Advisor or LPA) includes several resources for New York state law.  This tool is popular in law firms that subscribe to LexisAdvance, so law students planning to practice in New York should become familiar with it.

Access: click the Product Switcher icon at the top left corner of the LexisAdvance homepage (it's a box with little boxes inside it).  Then, click Lexis Practice Advisor .  On the Practice Advisor home page, click Jurisdiction , then click New York .  From here, you can browse by practice area or by content type, or run a search.

The New York State Bar Association (http://www.nysba.org/) is responsible for governing the practice of law in New York state.  

Continuing legal education (CLE) is available online through the New York State Bar Association.  For more information, visit  http://www.nysba.org/CLE/ .

Selected CLE materials for New York are available in Westlaw, through the City Bar Center for CLE collection.

For help, visit the HLSL Ask a Librarian website: http://asklib.law.harvard.edu .  

This site includes links to all of our research guides, contact information for the research librarians (phone, text, email, chat), and a schedule of our training classes.  

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Research Assistant Resources

• Outline & Guide Information
• Getting Started with Research
• International and Foreign Law
• Legislative and Congressional Documents

Introduction

Legislative history overview, locating federal legislative history materials.

• Litigation Documents
• Regulations
• ALRs, Treatises, Encyclopedias, Restatements
• Books and eBooks
• Interdisciplinary Resources
• Journal Articles

Key Databases

• ProQuest Legislative Insight
• ProQuest Congressional

This section of the guide is a short introduction to federal legislative history research. A more thorough how-to guide on federal legislative history research is available here , as is a how-to guide on New York state legislative history research .

Should you run into questions or concerns with your research, feel free to reach out to the librarian assigned to your faculty member for specialized advice. Please check   this list  to determine which librarian you should contact. 

"Legislative history" refers to a variety of documents created during the legislative process like bills, hearings, debates, and more. Legislative history is sometimes considered by courts to help determine the intent of the legislature in passing a particular law. Each stage of the legislative process produces particular documents, so it is important to understand the process of enacting a law before diving into the research. See below for an abbreviated discussion on how a bill becomes a law in the federal government and in New York.

Federal Legislative History Overview

The legislative process is complicated and not always this linear, but below is a simplified explanation of how a bill becomes a law:

1. A bill is introduced to either the House of Representatives or the Senate. The bill is given a  bill number.  Bills from the Senate are designated with an S., and bills from the House are designated with an H.R (for example, 96 H.R. 3343). 

2. The bill is referred to committee, and typically referred again to a subcommittee. If the committee or subcommittee does not favor its passage, it can take no action. 

3. The subcommittee holds hearings and, if it recommends passage, writes a committee report to tell the full chamber of its findings.

4. The bill goes to the full chamber and can be debated and amended before being voted on;  floor debates are recorded.

5. If the bill is passed, it goes to the other chamber to be voted on. Often, the two chambers will pass slightly different versions of the same bill. The two versions will then go to a conference committee, which makes compromises to reconcile the differences between the two bills, which will be discussed in a  conference committee report. 

6. The passed bill goes to the President to be signed into law. If the President signs the bill (or if the President vetoes the bill and two-thirds of Congress again passes the bill), the bill is now a law and is assigned a  public law number (for example, P.L. 96-170). You can find the public law number in the  Credits  line underneath the text of a statute on Westlaw or the  History  line underneath the text of a statute on Lexis. 

There are four main sources of federal legislative history materials, listed below in order of least to most authoritative:

1. The bill as introduced in Congress.  Comparing the original language in the bill as proposed against the bill as signed into law can be helpful for determining the goals and priorities of the legislature. However, this requires some level of speculation and is therefore not the most authoritative source of legislative intent. 

        To locate a bill:

• The best resource for locating a bill that was later signed into law is the ProQuest Legislative Insight database. You can search for the bill either by its U.S.C. citation, the Statutes at Large citation, or the bill number citation.  
• You can also use Congress.gov , a free government resource which holds all versions of a public law - included the law as it was introduced in Congress - starting with the 93rd Congress (1973-1974).
• The best resource for locating a bill that was introduced but  not  signed into law is the ProQuest Congressional   database. You can search for the bill by its bill number, or try to search using keywords and other information like the year and bill sponsor.
• You can also use   Congress.gov , a free government resource, to find bills introduced and not signed (or not yet signed) into law. Use the filters on the left-hand side to select your years (starting in 1973) and the status of legislation.

2. Hearings before a committee.  Hearing documents contain transcripts of testimony from interested parties and experts, studies, reports, and any other information brought before the committee. These documents will have an obvious intent that may not necessarily reflect those of the legislature, but can be useful in determining if any particular expert or interested party was able to convince the legislature to consider their position. 

        To locate hearing documents:

• ProQuest Congressional  contains hearings from 1824 through today. You can search by keyword or phrase, or by the witness/panelist. 

3. Floor debates. Floor debates include the statements of individual legislators in Congress. These statements will provide insight into the views of an individual  representative and could provide some insight into why, for example, language was later added to a bill after a committee report was released. When researching floor debates, keep in mind that statements of individual legislators do not necessarily mirror the views of the legislature overall. 

        To locate floor debates:

• Westlaw has the Congressional Record from 1985 through today.
• Lexis has two versions: the Congressional Record from 1989 through today , and between 1873 and 1997 .
• Congress.gov has the Congressional Record for free from 1873 through today.
• HeinOnline has the Congressional Record and its predecessors beginning in 1789.
• ProQuest Congressional has the Congressional Record beginning in 1789.
• If you use ProQuest Legislative Insight to find legislative materials for an enacted law, associated pages from the Congressional Record will be available. 

4. Committee reports. Committee reports and conference committee reports contain the reasoning of the committee who held hearings and heard testimony from interested parties, and provide a recommendation to the full chamber on passing the bill. They are, therefore, considered the most useful and authoritative source of legislative intent. These reports typically contain a section-by-section analysis of the bill and the views of any dissenting members of the committee. 

        To locate committee reports:

• Again, ProQuest Legislative Insight will be your best database to turn to when looking for committee reports. Search for the enacted law either by Bill Number, Statutes at Large citation, or Public Law number. After you input your search, you will see a page containing the legislative history materials for that particular statute. This will typically include a PDF of the public law, all versions of the bill as introduced, PDFs of any hearings, and PDFs of committee reports. ProQuest will designate the most recent committee report with a gold star icon; this is often a great place to start your research. 
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Legal Research for Beginners

• Types of Law
• Constitutions
• Reading and Identifying Citations
• Activity Break
• New and Pending Legislation

Legislative History Research

• Documents Produced by the Courts
• New appellate & supreme court decisions
• Case Research
• Reading and Identifying Case Citations
• Activity Break 2
• Citators and “Good Law”
• Regulations
• Administrative Decisions
• Secondary Sources
• Activity Break 3
• Current Awareness
• LibGuides & Recommended Resources

Now that we've talked about researching very new and even pending legislation, let's turn our attention to how to research the history of a law and why we would want to do this.

• Conducting Legislative History Research consists of determining the meaning of the statutory language included in the law, as well as discovering the essential intention or purpose that was the original goal of the lawmakers when making the law as well as tracking the progress of a bill or a proposed law by researching all of the documents produced within the legislative process.  And there can be many!
• There is criticism in the legal field of doing this type of legislative history research by those who believe that the meaning and intent of a statute should be determined by the statute and its language alone and not be re-interpreted by analyzing foundational documents such as hearing transcripts or debates on the floor of congress, etc.

But regardless of this criticism, legislative history research is a very common thing.  So let's talk about what's involved so that you're prepared:

Main documents important for legislative history research

• Bills – major source of text of pending statute.
• Committee Reports – Considered the most important source for discovering legislative intent, these documents analyze bills and their purpose and often include its legislative history. They describe the bill and give the committee’s reasons for recommending it to the floor. Published in the Serial Set for that session of Congress.
• Floor debates – Debates in the House and Senate about the bill. May contain the bill’s sponsor’s interpretation of the proposed statute.
• Hearings – Contain the transcripts of testimony about the bill.

These are the main documents involved in passing legislation however there can be others as well.

Sources for Legislative History Research

So where can you go to start finding all of these different documents when conducting legislative history reserach?

Well you can go to the primary source on free websites such as congress.gov and govinfo, CRS - Congressional Research Service - reports, and there are paid services such as  Proquest Congressional which have most of the legislative documents, and then there are print sources such as USCCAN which are Printed committee reports for most statutes, these are also available on major platforms such as Westlaw and Lexis.

• Proquest Congressional bills & reports from 1789-present
• Congress.gov recent bills & reports from 1993 -present
• Govinfo.gov recent bills & reports from 1993 -present
• CRS Reports Thousands of reports containing legal and policy analysis
• United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (USCCAN) Printed committee reports for most statutes. Available in print and via Westlaw.

Compiled Legislative Histories

And then there are sources which have done the legwork for you.  There are many laws which have already had legislative histories compiled for them containing all of the documents included in the legislative process.

• Proquest's Legislative Insight offers compiled legislative histories covering more than 28,000 laws dating back to 1789. PDFs of bills, reports, hearings, debates, and other documents across terms of Congress.
• HeinOnline US Federal Legislative History Library  has PDFs of documents pertaining to more than 2,000 laws.
• Proquest Legislative Insight Compiled legislative histories covering more than 28,000 laws dating back to 1789. PDFs of bills, reports, hearings, debates, and other documents across terms of Congress.
• HeinOnline US Federal Legislative History Library PDFs of documents pertaining to more than 2,000 laws.

The Librarians' Society of Washington DC (LLSDC) has put together massive lists of compiled legislative histories and the laws they pertain to.  The first list indexes all of the legislative histories that can be found on commercial websites and the second contains only those available on free outlets such as HathiTrust.

• Legislative Histories of U.S. Laws on the Internet: Commercial Sources List of all legislative histories available across commercial sources such as HeinOnline, Lexis, and Westlaw from the Law Librarians' Society of Washington DC (LLSDC).
• Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet: Free Sources Massive list of free legislative histories available on websites such as the DOJ, HathiTrust, etc. from the Law Librarians' Society of Washington DC (LLSDC)

Examples of Legislative History Research

Here are a couple of screenshots of the LLSDC lists of commercial and free sources, you can see the laws listed begin with PL which stands for Public Law.

Librarians' Society of Washington DC (LLSDC): https://www.llsdc.org/

Here are over 12,000 legislative histories provided through Proquest Congressional and on the right just one legislative history, you can see all of the different related documents provided.

Proquest Congressional -  https://congressional.proquest.com/help/congressional/leghistpt_cpt.html

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Arizona House Votes to Repeal 1864 Abortion Law

The almost-complete ban on abortions in the state could go into effect as soon as June 8 if the State Legislature does not repeal it, the state’s attorney general said.

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By Jack Healy ,  Elizabeth Dias and Kellen Browning

Jack Healy reported from Phoenix, Elizabeth Dias from New York and Kellen Browning from San Francisco.

Arizona took a major step on Wednesday toward scrapping an 1864 law banning abortion, when three Republican lawmakers in the state House of Representatives broke ranks with their party and voted with Democrats to repeal the ban.

Republicans have narrow majorities in both chambers of Arizona’s Legislature, and had blocked earlier repeal efforts in the two weeks since the Arizona Supreme Court ignited a political firestorm by reviving the Civil War-era law.

But on Wednesday, despite last-minute delay tactics and emotional speeches from conservatives who equated abortion with murder and slavery, Republican lawmakers from districts in the Phoenix area and a rural farming county joined with Democrats to pass the repeal bill, 32 to 28.

The State Senate could take up a vote on repeal next week. With two Republican senators already supporting repeal, Democrats say they believe they will prevail. Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat and a vocal supporter of abortion rights, has been urging lawmakers to repeal the 1864 law and is expected to sign a repeal if it reaches her desk.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, a Democrat, who introduced the one-sentence bill to repeal the 1864 law, said on the floor of the House after the vote on Wednesday. “The eyes of the world have been on Arizona. A repeal keeps us from going backward.”

Democrats and abortion-rights groups celebrated the vote as an important move toward undoing what they called a draconian intrusion into women’s rights. The 1864 law outlaws abortions from the moment of conception except to save the mother’s life, and it makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

“This is a major win for reproductive freedom,” Angela Florez, president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, said in a statement.

Some Republicans — including former President Donald J. Trump, who has taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade — have urged the Legislature to scrap the 1864 law quickly, to try to head off a possible election-year backlash. But conservative politicians in Arizona and abortion opponents who filled the House gallery on Wednesday angrily denounced the repeal vote.

As the members prepared to vote, some anti-abortion activists stood silently with their hands raised. Some quietly prayed. Others walked out before the votes were tallied.

“I don’t know what just happened here,” said House Speaker Ben Toma, a Republican. “I’m done.”

The bill passed with support from every Democrat in the chamber, as well as from three Republican representatives — Matt Gress, Tim Dunn and Justin Wilmeth. Moments after the vote, Mr. Toma removed Mr. Gress from his seat on the House’s appropriations committee. He declined to say whether the move was punishment for Mr. Gress’s support of the repeal.

“I’m disgusted, I’m disappointed,” said state Representative Alexander Kolodin, a Republican who tried to thwart the repeal vote on Wednesday by introducing a measure that would allow private citizens to sue abortion providers who violated Arizona’s laws.

After the repeal passed on Wednesday, Cathi Herrod, the president of the Center for Arizona Policy and one of Arizona’s most prominent opponents of abortion, wrote on X: “Tears today for the lives of unborn children whose lives will be lost and their mothers harmed by today’s Arizona House.”

They stood in contrast to a handful of top Republicans, including Mr. Trump, who face competitive November elections and who sought to distance themselves from what appeared to be a politically unpopular law.

In a celebratory statement, Yolanda Bejarano, the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, called out each of the Republicans who supported the repeal, saying they “are rightfully scared that Arizonans will vote them out in November."

“MAGA Republicans have spent the last week lying about their stance on abortion because they know that when abortion is on the ballot, Democrats win, every time,” Ms. Bejarano said.

Political analysts said Republicans who voted to go around their leaders risked alienating their own voters in conservative districts, as well as jeopardizing their other priorities as the Legislature starts working to pass Arizona’s annual budget.

Though the State Supreme Court revived the 1864 law on April 9, it would not go back into effect before June 8, according to Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat.

The fight over the ban has consumed Arizona politics since the court decided that it could be enforced even though Arizona passed a law two years ago that allowed abortions through 15 weeks.

The court put its ruling temporarily on hold, meaning that abortions have been allowed to continue under the 15-week rules.

Abortion providers, who face two to five years in prison if convicted under the 1864 law, said they were likely to stop performing all abortions once it takes effect. But there is growing tension and disagreement over when, exactly, that might be.

Ms. Mayes has said that she would not prosecute anyone under the 1864 law. She has also said that her office was exploring other legal challenges that could delay its implementation beyond June 8.

On Tuesday night, Ms. Mayes asked the State Supreme Court to reconsider its decision reviving the 1864 ban on the grounds that abortions were permitted under the 2022 law.

In contrast, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian group that argued in court to uphold the ban, said it believed county prosecutors could start enforcing the law this week.

Because the legislature is meeting only once a week, lawmakers and abortion providers worry that their window to get a repeal enacted is closing rapidly.

“There is a lot of concern,” said State Senator Eva Burch, a Democrat and nurse practitioner who gave a speech last month describing how she had to get an abortion to terminate a nonviable pregnancy. “It’s a scary time to be a pregnant person in Arizona.”

For anti-abortion activists, the prospect of repeal is another sign that they are losing ground, as opposition to extreme restrictions grows. Arizona is a state where their movement has deep roots, and where they have clung to the hope that allies in the Legislature would withstand pressure to change the 1864 law.

After the House vote on Wednesday, they rallied around a message that they would persevere, even though the prospects for stopping a repeal have dwindled.

Debi Vandenboom, a director at Arizona Women of Action, said she was “deeply saddened but not surprised” by the House’s vote to advance the repeal.

“It is always unfortunate when politicians who claim to be pro-life are willing to betray women and children when it seems politically expedient to do so,” she said. “The battle is far from over. I, and others like me, are in it for the long haul. In Arizona we have the opportunity and responsibility to get this right.”

Greg Scott, vice president of policy at the Center for Arizona Policy, called the day “tragic” for Arizona. “The law that has been on the books for the entire history of the state is one of the most life-protective laws in the country,” he said. “While we mourn today, we aren’t pausing for a moment in our advocacy for unborn children.”

But their options are limited, now that some Republican lawmakers have sided with the Democrats.

For their part, abortion rights supporters are working to capitalize on their growing energy and momentum, and hope to pass a referendum in November to guarantee abortion rights in the State Constitution.

The advance of the repeal bill is “one step towards possible improvement,” said Tricia Sauer, an organizer with Indivisible who was in the House gallery for the vote on Wednesday. “But what we’re really focused on is continuing to collect signatures for the only real option for restoring reproductive freedoms.”

Jack Healy is a Phoenix-based national correspondent who focuses on the fast-changing politics and climate of the Southwest. He has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s journalism school. More about Jack Healy

Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and culture. More about Elizabeth Dias

Kellen Browning is a Times reporter covering the 2024 election, with a focus on the swing states of Nevada and Arizona. More about Kellen Browning

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First year of DESI results unveil new clues about dark energy

Ohio state scientists make waves in universe-bending discovery.

Researchers at The Ohio State University played a major role in analyzing the first year of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s survey into the history of the universe.

With 5,000 tiny robots in a mountaintop telescope, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collects and measures light from faraway space objects, granting scientists the ability to peer 11 billion years into the past. Studying how the cosmos evolved is important to understand how it began and might end, and opens up further questions about dark energy, an unknown ingredient causing our universe to expand faster and faster. 

DESI, an international collaboration involving more than 900 scientists from over 70 institutions around the world, is managed by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and includes large contributions from its Ohio State members. Led by physics professor Klaus Honscheid and astronomy and physics professor Paul Martini , the group now includes professors, research scientists, and graduate and undergraduate students from across the university.

Two Ohio State members, Andrei Cuceu , a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy and co-convener of the Lyman alpha science working group who led efforts to validate the instrument’s latest results, and Ashley Ross, a research scientist at the university’s Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics and co-lead of the group that prepared DESI’s map for interpretation and accounted for changes in the instrument's performance, were integral to the recent DESI discoveries. 

“DESI looks at a wide range of times across the history of the universe and our work looked at some of those most distant measurements,” said Cuceu. “We did this by measuring a feature called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), minute ripple patterns that the universe provides that indicate the distribution of matter as it evolves.”

Large-scale surveys have used BAO measurements as cosmic rulers to map universe expansion in great detail, as researchers can get a better grasp of how dark energy may have stretched the universe at certain points and distances in time by comparing how they ripple through space. In a study led by Cuceu, one team used them to confirm the accuracy of 150 artificial datasets made to mimic DESI’s first data release, eventually concluding that the instrument’s findings were accurate throughout many different cosmological constraints. 

“We threw it at many different types of models and decisions across the analysis process, and it always seemed to generate roughly the same end result,” said Cuceu. Their findings are monumental because they show that DESI’s results provide tantalizing suggestions that call into question both typical models of cosmology and scientists’ current ideas about how physics works, said Ross.

“ One of the experiment’s goals is to essentially explore the nature of dark energy and if it changes over time, ” he said. “These first DESI results offer a hint that it might not be a cosmological constant.”

Beyond dark energy, DESI has also been used to study many other cosmological mysteries important for physics, such as the mass of important particles called neutrinos and how individual galaxies develop over time. Martini, who was the instrument scientist for DESI during its construction and commissioning, said that what makes DESI’s results so groundbreaking is the depth of the instrument’s analysis. 

“The improvement that we have managed to achieve is really driven not just by the fact that we have 10 times as much data as previous projects, but also that we took time to really understand the steps and potential sources of uncertainty much better,” Martini said.

This analysis covers data collected from 2021 to 2022, and DESI has been collecting new data ever since, meaning there are now three years of promising new data for scientists to comb through. 

“For now, we’re experimenting in a new era of cosmology,” said Cuceu. 

Toward the end of the decade, the data DESI continues to collect will also be used to complement next-generation sky surveys, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. As those instruments collect more precise data and scientists get to work decoding their results, many are confident that even more exciting pieces of the universe’s ever-changing cosmic puzzle will be revealed. 

“It is a really exciting result that could indicate a significant change in our understanding of the universe, and the fact that we see these hints about dark energy gives us fuel to keep going,” said Honscheid, who is the current DESI instrument scientist and instrument operations lead. “The future looks extremely bright for DESI and other long-term experiments like this one.”

​DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility. Additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico, the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain, and by the DESI member institutions. 

The DESI collaboration is honored to be permitted to conduct research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to Tohono O’odham Nation.

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