[2602.09678] Administrative Law's Fourth Settlement: AI and the Capability-Accountability Trap

Computer Science > Computers and Society arXiv:2602.09678 (cs) [Submitted on 10 Feb 2026 (v1), last revised 26 Mar 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:Administrative Law's Fourth Settlement: AI and the Capability-Accountability Trap Authors:Nicholas Caputo View a PDF of the paper titled Administrative Law's Fourth Settlement: AI and the Capability-Accountability Trap, by Nicholas Caputo View PDF Abstract:Since 1887, administrative law has navigated a "capability-accountability trap": technological change forces government to become more sophisticated, but sophistication renders agencies opaque to generalist overseers like the courts and Congress. The law's response--substituting procedural review for substantive oversight--has produced a sedimentary accretion of requirements that ossify capacity without ensuring democratic control. This Article argues that the Supreme Court's post-Loper Bright retrenchment is best understood as an effort to shrink administration back to comprehensible size in response to this complexification. But reducing complexity in this way sacrifices capability precisely when climate change, pandemics, and AI risks demand more sophisticated governance. AI offers a different path. Unlike many prior administrative technologies that increased opacity alongside capacity, AI can help build "scrutability" in government, translating technical complexity into accessible terms, surfacing the assumptions that matter for oversight, and enabling substantive verificat...