Deontic Debt and Institutional Insolvency: Answerability and the Limits of Scalable Authority

Automation can expand an institution’s capacity to issue practically authoritative claims faster than its capacity to reconsider and repair them. This paper develops Deontic Debt as the accumulated deficit of due but inadequately discharged answerability obligations attached to institutional commitments. Debt is distinguished from routine backlog by the maturity of an obligation, normatively impermissible delay or obstruction, and an unresolved claim or its consequences. A schematic servicing model separates substantive discharge from administrative closure and identifies suppressed demand, unequal access, and residual repair as sources of hidden liability. Institutional Insolvency arises when the affected decision architecture cannot sustain answerability within an acceptable horizon while continuing issuance at its existing scale. Its consequence is targeted loss of presumptive authority, rather than automatic legal nullity or disappearance of institutional responsibility. Existing adverse claims require protection and revalidation; new adverse claims require serviceable sponsorship; scalable authority is restored through demonstrated institutional reform. Robodebt provides a non-generative documentary anchor, supplemented by a documented TennCare disenrollment comparator and hypothetical insurance and credit comparisons. Proposed logging rules and weighting protocols make the model available for empirical testing without treating it as validated. The evidence illustrates the mechanism without establishing a calibrated debt stock or a precise historical insolvency date. The contribution is a capacity-sensitive argument connecting institutional commitments, persistent failures of recourse, and a defeasible entitlement to exercise authority at scale.