Abstract
Technological advancement has profoundly transformed governance, administration, commerce, and daily life. Governments increasingly rely on digital platforms, surveillance systems, artificial intelligence, and big data to deliver public services and maintain security. While these developments offer efficiency and innovation, they also raise complex constitutional and legal concerns. Judicial review, as a cornerstone of constitutional democracy, must evolve to address challenges arising from digital governance, privacy risks, automated decision-making, and cyber regulation. This research paper explores the changing nature of judicial review in the technological era, its role in protecting fundamental rights, emerging challenges, comparative global perspectives, and the need for legal reforms to balance innovation with constitutional safeguards.
Keywords: Judicial review, technology, digital governance, privacy, AI, constitutional law, India.
- Introduction
The twenty-first century has witnessed an unprecedented integration of technology into governance and everyday social life. Governments across the world increasingly rely on digital infrastructure such as e-governance portals, biometric identification systems, artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, and surveillance technologies to deliver public services and maintain administrative efficiency. In India, for instance, the rapid expansion of digital public infrastructure, online welfare delivery, and data-driven governance has transformed the relationship between the state and citizens. These developments promise greater transparency, speed, and accessibility in governance, reducing bureaucratic delays and enabling large-scale service delivery. However, the same technologies also create serious risks related to privacy, mass surveillance, algorithmic bias, exclusion of vulnerable populations, and lack of accountability in automated decision-making systems.[1]
Judicial review has traditionally functioned as a constitutional safeguard against arbitrary exercise of executive and legislative power. Courts examine whether state action complies with constitutional guarantees such as fundamental rights, rule of law, and due process. With the rise of digital governance, the nature of state power has expanded into new domains, including data collection, predictive policing, facial recognition, and automated welfare decisions. As a result, courts are increasingly required to address complex legal questions concerning data protection, informational privacy, algorithmic transparency, and digital due process.[2] The judiciary must therefore reinterpret constitutional principles in light of technological realities, ensuring that innovation does not undermine democratic accountability and civil liberties. In this evolving landscape, judicial review plays a crucial role in balancing technological advancement with the protection of fundamental rights.[3]
[1]Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (PublicAffairs 2019).
[2]Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
[3]Mark Tushnet, Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law (Edward Elgar 2014).