Civic legal research · New York City
OpenStatute uses AI to read every enacted NYC local law, flag the ones that look antiquated, unusual, or unclear, and puts each flag in front of a human before it's published.
"Unlawful to deal or operate three-card monte on any public street, sidewalk or plaza." NYC Admin Code §10-161
WeirdAbout
New York's regulatory reset showed what's possible when AI is pointed at 18 million words of state text. Nobody is doing the same for city law: the layer that actually decides who needs a permit, who gets fined, and what's still on the books from a city that no longer exists. OpenStatute is a project built to close that gap, starting with New York City.
01. Centralize
Local laws, enacted bills, and agency rules, sourced directly from NYC Council and NYC Open Data, deduplicated into one queryable record.
02. Flag
Every enacted law gets a first-pass read: antiquated, weird, or needs a human's judgment. Most laws get flagged normal and stay out of the way.
03. Review
Flags are a starting point, not a verdict. Nothing is presented as fact until someone with legal training has read it.
Database
This is the full set: enacted local laws alongside bills that were proposed but died in committee, were withdrawn, or never got a vote. A bill that never became law is not "a law," so every card below shows its real status. Only enacted laws are put through the antiquated/weird review; the rest are shown as historical record.