LIJDLR

Volume IV Issue II

THE EU AI ACT AND THE RIGHT TO ASYLUM: ARE “HIGH-RISK” SAFEGUARDS ENOUGH FOR ASYLUM, VISA, AND RESIDENCE DECISIONS?

Volume IV Issue II /

THE EU AI ACT AND THE RIGHT TO ASYLUM: ARE “HIGH-RISK” SAFEGUARDS ENOUGH FOR ASYLUM, VISA, AND RESIDENCE DECISIONS? Prabin Acharya, Advocate licensed to practice in Nepal Legal Researcher and Immigration Law Professional; LL.M., University of California, Davis School of Law (2025) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.224 This paper examines whether the EU AI Act’s “high-risk” framework adequately protects the right to asylum when artificial intelligence assists asylum, visa, and residence decisions. It situates AI within EU migration governance, where automated screening, document analysis, risk indicators, country-of-origin research, and credibility tools may influence access to protection before a human officer gives reasons. The paper argues that the AI Act marks an important regulatory advance because it expressly classifies several migration, asylum, and border-control AI systems as high-risk and subjects them to duties of risk management, data governance, transparency, human oversight, accuracy, and fundamental rights assessment. Yet these safeguards remain incomplete if they operate only as technical compliance standards. Asylum law demands individualised assessment, meaningful reasons, effective remedy, and strict respect for non-refoulement under the EU Charter, the Refugee Convention, and the Common European Asylum System. The paper further contends that opacity, automation bias, weak disclosure, and predictive profiling may convert AI assistance into disguised determinative decision-making. It therefore proposes a rights-centred model requiring notice, explainability, independent audit, case-file traceability, and stronger limits on AI tools that affect credibility, evidence reliability, or removal outcomes. Its central claim is that technology must remain subordinate to protection and due process.

THE EU AI ACT AND THE RIGHT TO ASYLUM: ARE “HIGH-RISK” SAFEGUARDS ENOUGH FOR ASYLUM, VISA, AND RESIDENCE DECISIONS? Read More »

REGULATORY CAPTURE IN INDIA: WHEN REGULATORS SERVE THE ELITE

Volume IV Issue II /

REGULATORY CAPTURE IN INDIA: WHEN REGULATORS SERVE THE ELITE Jenimettilda J, LL.M, 4th Semester, Student at Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.223 Regulatory bodies play an important role in modern governance because they are responsible for overseeing industries, enforcing legal standards, and ensuring that economic activities are carried out in a fair and accountable manner. In India, several independent regulatory institutions have been established in sectors such as telecommunications, banking, securities markets, environmental protection, competition law, and natural resources. These bodies are expected to function impartially and strike a balance between economic development and public welfare. However, concerns have increasingly been raised about regulatory capture, a situation in which regulators become influenced by the very groups they are meant to regulate. When this happens, regulatory decisions may begin to favour powerful corporations, influential business interests, or political actors rather than the interests of the wider public. This article examines the idea of regulatory capture in the Indian context and explores the ways in which elite influence can affect regulatory decision-making. It discusses the development of the concept and its relevance in contemporary regulatory governance. The study further analyses how regulatory capture may arise in important sectors such as telecommunications, environmental administration, financial regulation, and natural resource management. It argues that regulatory capture should be viewed as a form of elite class deviance because it allows powerful groups to secure advantages through institutional influence while often remaining beyond direct legal scrutiny. The article also highlights the wider consequences of regulatory capture, including reduced public trust, weakened accountability, distorted market conditions, and challenges to democratic governance. In light of these concerns, the study suggests a number of reforms aimed at improving transparency, strengthening institutional independence, enhancing accountability, and encouraging greater public participation in regulatory processes. Such measures are necessary to ensure that regulatory institutions continue to serve the public interest and remain resistant to undue influence from powerful elite groups.

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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FREE-AI COMMITTEE REPORT

Volume IV Issue II /

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FREE-AI COMMITTEE REPORT Neelansh Rao, Advocate at District court (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.222 Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and generative AI, is transforming financial services by improving customer engagement, credit assessment, risk management, fraud detection, and operational efficiency. Its growing deployment, however, also creates material concerns relating to data protection, operational resilience, market integrity, cybersecurity, and model governance. Against this background, the Reserve Bank of India constituted the Committee on the Framework for Responsible and Ethical Enablement of Artificial Intelligence (FREE-AI) to formulate a comprehensive framework for responsible AI adoption in the financial sector. The Committee’s Report advances seven guiding “Sutras” and six strategic pillars. The pillars combine innovation enablement through infrastructure, policy, and capacity with risk mitigation through governance, protection, and assurance. This paper undertakes a comparative legal and policy analysis of the FREE-AI recommendations alongside the regulatory approaches of the European Union and Singapore. It uses a doctrinal and comparative method to examine their respective approaches to AI governance, accountability, transparency, consumer protection, data governance, audit, and innovation across the AI lifecycle. The comparison identifies convergences in governance, transparency, and consumer protection, but differences in regulatory design and implementation. The analysis finds that the FREE-AI framework seeks to balance financial innovation with safeguards for fairness, explainability, security, and systemic stability. While the European Union adopts a more prescriptive, risk-based regime and Singapore relies substantially on principles- and guidance-based supervision, the Indian framework offers a sector-specific, phased model designed to support responsible deployment by regulated entities. The paper argues that its effectiveness will depend on clear supervisory standards, institutional capacity, reliable data governance, and robust assurance mechanisms.

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ILLEGAL STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS: STATUTORY PROVISIONS AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION

Volume IV Issue II /

ILLEGAL STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS: STATUTORY PROVISIONS AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION Anushka Maharshi, BA.LLB, 9th Semester, Student at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.221 This article examines the statutory regulation of strikes and lockouts in Indian industrial-dispute law, using the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (IDA) as its principal doctrinal framework. It advances the central argument that judicial treatment of “illegal” and “unjustified” strikes, and of employer lockouts, has not been conceptually uniform, creating uncertainty over procedural compliance, proportionality, wage consequences and the permissible limits of collective action. Through a doctrinal analysis of the definitions in sections 2(q) and 2(l), the restrictions in sections 22 and 23 and the illegality rule in section 24, the article assesses the interaction among notice, conciliation, adjudication and industrial action. It engages with Kameshwar Prasad v State of Bihar, Crompton Greaves Ltd v Its Workmen, Tata Iron & Steel Co Ltd v Their Workmen, and related decisions to distinguish statutory illegality from factual justification, scrutinise the legality of lockouts, and evaluate the requirement of proportionate disciplinary responses. A comparative examination of the United Kingdom and the United States identifies the value of clear procedural standards, effective conciliation and protected lawful collective action, while preserving continuity in essential services. The article finds that the IDA’s formal restrictions, ambiguity surrounding employer countermeasures and delay-prone dispute-resolution processes can disproportionately constrain workers, especially when bargaining channels fail. It therefore recommends precise statutory definitions, calibrated notice requirements, strengthened independent conciliation, sector-sensitive continuity arrangements and accessible legal-awareness measures. These proposals seek to reconcile industrial peace with meaningful protection for workers and employers. As the Industrial Relations Code 2020 has subsumed the IDA and is now in force, the article situates the older statute’s jurisprudence as an indispensable interpretative foundation for the contemporary framework. Its contribution lies in offering a structured approach to reconciling legality, justification and proportionality in strike and lockout disputes.

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DIGITAL EVIDENCE, AI, AND CRIMINAL TRIALS IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Volume IV Issue II /

DIGITAL EVIDENCE, AI, AND CRIMINAL TRIALS IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS Puneet Kumar Rastogi, B.A.LL.B.(H), 9th Semester, Student at Faculty of Law, University of Allahabad (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.220 The operational framework of criminal investigations and trials in India is undergoing a structural transformation due to rapid advances in consumer electronics, cloud storage, encrypted communications, algorithmic databases, and artificial intelligence. Investigating agencies increasingly rely on data drawn from remote servers, mobile devices, transient messaging platforms, automated forensic systems, and synthetic-media environments to reconstruct criminal conduct. This paper undertakes a doctrinal and constitutional critique of the statutory framework governing electronic evidence under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), particularly the admissibility regime created by Section 63 and the certificate mechanism under Section 63(4). It argues that the BSA modernizes Indian evidence law by placing electronic records within the mainstream of documentary proof and by introducing clearer distinctions between primary and secondary electronic evidence. However, the paper also finds that the dual-certification model, while improving reliability through custodian and expert validation, may create practical burdens for police agencies and forensic laboratories unless supported by adequate infrastructure and standardized procedures. The analysis further examines the evidentiary risks posed by artificial intelligence, deepfakes, opaque forensic software, and machine-generated outputs. It contends that metadata verification and hash-value integrity, though essential, are insufficient where synthetic media is created as an original digital file. In such cases, courts must demand deeper forensic scrutiny, source-code accountability, error-rate disclosure, and algorithmic transparency. The paper concludes that Article 21’s guarantee of fair trial and due process requires a right to meaningful challenge against automated or AI-assisted evidence, ensuring that technological efficiency does not override constitutional safeguards in Indian criminal trials.

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REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL

Volume IV Issue II /

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Mr. Susen Kamble, LL.M (Constitutional and Administrative Law), Student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.219 This article examines whether the sequencing and design of regulatory reform, rather than the ideological choice between regulation and deregulation, determines institutional durability and consumer-welfare outcomes. It employs a structured comparative-doctrinal method, analysing enabling legislation, regulatory mandates, appellate arrangements, judicial decisions, agency materials, and multilateral institutional assessments. The study compares India, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Brazil between 1980 and 2025, with banking and telecommunications as its two principal sectors; energy and transportation are used only as contextual comparators. The article advances three propositions. First, reforms that establish operationally independent regulators with technical capacity and effective appellate oversight before competitive market opening are more likely to yield durable outcomes than reforms that liberalise first and regulate later. Second, regulatory capture is a systemic institutional risk requiring structural, rather than exclusively procedural, safeguards. Third, Indian regulatory law is broadly capable of supporting adaptive governance but retains identifiable gaps in accountability, independence, and anti-capture design. By disaggregating the regulation–deregulation binary into sequencing, agency independence, appellate architecture, stakeholder engagement, anti-capture safeguards, and adaptive capacity, the analysis identifies institutional combinations associated with resilient regulatory systems. The comparative findings support a reform agenda centred on pre-liberalisation institutional investment; transparent, independent data capacity; fixed and protected regulatory appointments; cooling-off restrictions; and stronger legal protection for the autonomy of systemically significant agencies. For India, the article recommends circumscribing executive direction powers and considering enhanced constitutional or other higher-order legal safeguards for key regulators. The analysis is deliberately doctrinal and institutional, not econometric: it does not claim to establish universal causal effects or measure sectoral outcomes exhaustively. Its conclusions are therefore limited to the five selected jurisdictions, the two primary sectors, and the 1980–2025 period. Within those limits, the article offers a transferable framework for evaluating regulatory reform.

REGULATORY SEQUENCING AND ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE: A COMPARATIVE LEGAL STUDY OF BANKING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REFORM IN INDIA, THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, JAPAN, AND BRAZIL Read More »

WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY

Volume IV Issue II /

WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY Drishya Srivastava, LL. B (H), 6th Semester, Student at C.M.P. Degree College Affiliated to University of Allahabad (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.218 Throughout recorded history, legal obligation and moral expectation have rarely occupied perfectly coincident territory. Ancient societies tended to ground their regulatory frameworks in religious or philosophical authority, creating the appearance and often the functional reality of unity between the legal and the moral. That picture has since undergone a decisive transformation. Contemporary legal systems are shaped by parliamentary bargaining, judicial interpretation, constitutional text, and institutional inertia, none of which is reducible to any single community’s moral outlook. This paper traces that transformation. Its central argument is that while law was historically conceived as derivative of moral order, it has progressively established an authority of its own—one that not only operates independently of prevailing ethical consensus but, in certain contexts, actively overrides it. This development is not lamented here as a pathology of modern governance. In societies marked by deep and irreducible moral pluralism, law’s capacity to function without requiring unanimous ethical agreement is precisely what allows it to serve as a shared framework for coexistence. The paper surveys this dynamic across several domains’ reproductive rights, end-of-life decision-making, criminal punishment, and digital privacy drawing primarily on Indian, British, and American legal experience. It engages with the principal theoretical accounts of the law-morality relationship, from classical natural law theory through Hartian positivism to the Indian Supreme Court’s distinctive doctrine of constitutional morality. Recent developments including the reversal of constitutional abortion protections in the United States and the ongoing operationalisation of data protection regimes in India and Europe illustrate with fresh urgency how quickly law’s relationship to prevailing ethical consensus can shift. The conclusion advanced is that law’s institutional independence from ethics, while real and significant, does not dissolve law’s responsibility to remain open to ethical scrutiny, critique, and reform.

WHEN LAW TRANSCENDS ETHICS: THE SHIFTING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL NORMS, MORAL REASONING, AND SOCIAL NECESSITY Read More »

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF GENERATIVE AI AND DEEP LEARNING

Volume IV Issue II /

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF GENERATIVE AI AND DEEP LEARNING Aditi Gupta, B.A. LLB. (H), 10th Semester, Student at S.S. Khanna Girls Degree College (India) Kumar Prabhakar, B.A. LLB. (H), 10th Semester, Student at Presidency University, Bangalore (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.217 In the era of technological advancement and generative AI and deep learning, the authors of the paper focused on the research study that addresses the research problems including lawful unreliability encircling authorship, possession, potential for exclusive rights, and violation driven by contents and inventions generated by AI. The authors’ research objective aims to assess the legal frameworks for intellectual property specifically in relation with patent law and Indian copyright frameworks. Through this analysis, adequacy is measured in regulation of algorithmically generated content and solutions in the lack of AI regulations. The scope of the study is restricted to copyright and patent involvement of Generative AI with deep learning technologies, that integrates the use of licensed and confidential data in the process of training of AI, acknowledgement of works that are AI generated, industry wide administrative responses. The authors adopted doctrinal and analytical method approach as the research methodology involving the statutory provision’s examination, judicial rulings, policy papers, scholarly articles, and sector practices are used to discover areas lacking regulation and difficulties in interpretation. The key findings and analysis of the paper indicate that present intellectual property regulations are highly aimed at humans and are not enough prepared to manage outputs from autonomous AI, as AI systems lack juristic personality, which results in ongoing hurdles regarding proprietorship, responsibility, and safeguard. Additionally, the research shows that using licensing content to train AI models carries major risks of infringement, leading to overreliance on contractual safeguards and self-regulatory mechanisms by online platforms. The document concludes that the rapid development of generative AI requires updates to legal frameworks, clearer policy directions, and a new understanding of creativity and originality to safeguard human intellectual efforts while promoting responsible tech growth.

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IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION POLICIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH FOCUS ON INDIA

Volume IV Issue II /

IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION POLICIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH FOCUS ON INDIA Pratibha Tewatia, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Sanya Singh, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Tanvi Jain, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.216 Growing movement across borders increasingly tests national laws aiming to uphold government authority while meeting global duties to protect people. India, notable for sending many abroad yet also receiving large numbers, faces challenges as its outdated rules fail to match modern patterns of forced or voluntary relocation. Whether present policies secure basic freedoms for those crossing into the nation – be they asylum seekers, displaced individuals without citizenship, or laborers – is explored here through local judicial principles alongside worldwide standards. Beginning with India’s present framework under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, while situating the Foreigners Act, 1946 and related predecessor laws in their repealed historical context, the analysis then turns to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 and safeguards embedded within Article 21 of the Constitution. Instead of general assumptions, examination follows structure found across U.S., Canadian, and EU immigration models, then extends into policies practiced by several Middle Eastern nations. Rather than isolated rulings, judgments issued by India’s highest court align beside findings from global judicial bodies. Following this path, benchmarks originate in the 1951 Refugee Convention, tied further to foundational agreements drafted under UN authority on human rights. The results indicate that India’s laws on migration carry deep-rooted flaws – such as rules frozen in time, uneven application across regions, and shifting conditions for staying – which place at greater risk communities like the Rohingya along with people without legal status. Although key decisions by the Supreme Court have applied constitutional safeguards under Article 21 even to foreigners, hurdles built into processes still weaken actual ability to claim these protections. This work suggests fragmented court actions fail to address core issues; instead, coherence may emerge through legislation matching national policies to global human rights standards. A single legal structure could reflect such alignment more effectively than scattered rulings.

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LEGAL CHALLENGES OF AI-GENERATED CONTENT UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

Volume IV Issue II /

LEGAL CHALLENGES OF AI-GENERATED CONTENT UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE Sanya Singh, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University Gurugram (India) Prerna Sihag, B.A. LLB. (H), 7th Semester, Student at Amity University Gurugram (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v04.215 Artificial intelligence has changed how creative content is made — and Indian copyright law simply hasn’t caught up. The Copyright Act of 1957 was written with human creators in mind and is relatively silent when systems like GPT-4, Stable Diffusion, or Mid journey produce entire works independently. Who owns the output? Was training on copyrighted data even legal? The uncertainty is real, and its consequences are growing. This paper works through four questions: whether AI-generated works qualify for protection under Indian law; who holds authorship and ownership rights; when training AI on copyrighted material becomes infringement; and whether Section 52’s fair dealing provisions can realistically handle generative AI. It draws on doctrinal analysis and compares India’s approach against the US, EU, UK, Japan, and Singapore. The gaps are hard to ignore. No data mining exception, no framework for computer-generated authorship, no deepfake legislation — courts are stretching decades-old rules over problems they were never meant to solve. Though the ANI Media case against OpenAI highlights mounting pressure, no single verdict can resolve deep-rooted flaws. A judge’s decision might clarify legal boundaries – yet systemwide issues remain untouched. For India, progress means rethinking copyright with precise guidelines on who made what. Licensing systems for data used in machine learning could follow. Clearer expectations around disclosure might support artists while keeping new ideas flowing. Rules should balance fairness and invention, nothing more. The paper recommends a calibrated statutory framework that preserves protection for demonstrable human creative contribution, clarifies ownership where AI functions as a tool, introduces a limited and transparent data mining/licensing mechanism for training datasets, and strengthens disclosure duties for AI-assisted works. Such reform would better balance creator protection, legal certainty and innovation in India’s emerging AI economy.

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