Jan. 29: Law of Abundance Conference Edition

Jan 29, 2026

This special edition of Enabling Acts features papers presented at the Law of Abundance Conference at Yale Law School on January 23rd and 24th.

State Capacity

Due process implications of using AI for state benefits administration
Evaluation as Due Process: Civil Service in an Automated Age—Daniel E. Ho, Olivia Martin, Amy Perez, & Kit Rodolfa (Administrative Law Review)
Mathews v. Eldridge implicitly requires agencies evaluate AI systems to satisfy constitutional due process. Evaluations should test for accuracy, monitor for bias, and compare human versus automated error rates to check if humans or AI poses a greater risk of wrongly denying benefits to eligible people.
Legal analysis of flexible spending authorities (Other Transactions) to enable wider adoption
Unlocking Other Transactions—Mark Thomas
Other Transactions bypass 2,000 pages of procurement regulations but account for only 2% of spending despite 36 agencies having authority. Understanding how other laws, like appropriations laws, constrain them will give agencies the confidence to leverage this tool.

How to respond to the rising volume & costs of transactions and disputes
The Transaction Explosion and the Cost of Judgment—Daniel Wilf‑Townsend
The explosion in daily transactions—from credit card purchases to emergency room visits—has outpaced courts’ ability to handle disputes, while the cost of lawyers has grown faster than inflation for decades. Courts need cheaper ways to resolve cases beyond class actions, like simplified procedures for routine disputes and automated systems for low-stakes claims, or millions of disputes will never get resolved fairly.

How the abundance and labor movements can complement each other
Democratic Abundance: An Abundance that Works for Workers—Kate Andrias & Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Unions can help abundance succeed by training skilled workers through apprenticeships, building political coalitions for infrastructure investment, and improving government decision-making through labor participation. In return, abundance projects can expand union membership, but only if designed to ensure good jobs rather than purely deregulatory approaches that sacrifice worker protections.

Some NIMBY objections may be addressed by more aesthetic buildings
How Sociotropic Aesthetic Judgments Drive Opposition to Dense Housing Development—Chris Elmendorf, David Broockman, & Josh Kalla
Voters oppose apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods due to aesthetic judgments about visual “fit” rather than property values or resident concerns. Building design quality affects support more than demographics or amenities, suggesting aesthetic preferences—not NIMBYism—drive much housing opposition.

Electricity regulation reforms that can create energy abundance
Institutional Design for Electricity Abundance—Lynne Kiesling & Josh Macey
Electricity scarcity results from regulatory structures that reward utilities for capital investment while letting them control planning and pass costs to ratepayers. Separating monopoly grid operation from competitive generation, using market-based cost allocation, and allowing faster interconnection for high-value users would enable abundance under AI-driven demand growth.

How process and cultural reforms enabled Louisiana educational success
A Capacity Agenda for State Departments of Education—Julia Kaufman & Kunjan Narechania
Louisiana leads the nation in post-pandemic reading gains by focusing state capacity on a clear implementation chain: defining student classroom experiences, restructuring around functional teams instead of compliance offices, and aligning all incentives toward high-quality instructional materials adoption.

How in-house expertise can lower the costs of transit projects
State Capacity and the High Cost of Transit Projects—Eric Goldwyn
The US has the eighth most expensive transit construction costs ($626 million per kilometer) because agencies lack in-house expertise to manage consultants and control design bloat, as shown by Boston’s Green Line and NYC’s Second Avenue Subway.

Not presented at the conference, but recommended by participants

Submit research: Know of recent or forthcoming scholarship on these topics? Send it to enablingacts@gmail.com or reply to this email.