New York State Attorney General's Office Formal and Informal Opinions of the Attorney General

The series consists of manuscript and typescript copies of opinions and advisories rendered by the attorney general to state officers (including the governor and state comptroller) and to heads of various state departments, boards, and commissions. To a lesser extent there are responses to private citizens, or lawyers representing them, who may have been parties to actions by the state.

The opinions are in the form of letters in answer to specific inquiries, or as general directives to groups or classes of persons (e.g. commissioners of prisons, street commissioners). The bulk of later opinions interpret sections from parts of the corpus of state law (e.g. Civil Service Law, Public Officers Law), provide interpretations of issues (e.g. compensation over eminent domain), or suggest rules for compliance with enacted legislation (e.g. auto registration under the Highway Law). As such the opinions often directly pertain to the powers of officials and legislative intent. A statement of facts and a formal presentation of the inquiry are typically included with each opinion.

The copies are unsigned. Opinions dating from the second half of 1893 (after July 15) are missing from the series.

11076-97: The accretion is a loose assortment of opinion letters, most of which were sent as responses to the comptroller's office. Many are signed by the attorney general. The bulk of the opinions date 1800-1894. Arrangement is roughly chronological; a small group of opinions post-date 1893, somewhat filling a gap in the original series accretion.

B1203 Attorney General's opinions furnished to the Secretary of State extends and may fill gaps found in this series.

11076-94: Alphabetical subject index at the fore of each volume.

11076-94: Volume 15 (1893 Part); and Volumes 34 and 35 (1909) were never received by the Archives are considered to be no longer extant.

11076-97: These documents were originally part of old accession -15, series 1173-1174, but were accessioned as an accretion to Series 11076 in 1997. This accession resulted from a project by Archives staff to accession or integrate estrayed or unidentified records.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this material.