The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law

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The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law

9781803927077 Edward Elgar Publishing
Sophie Duroy, School of Law, University of Essex, UK
Publication Date: 2023 ISBN: 978 1 80392 707 7 Extent: 324 pp
Presenting a thorough examination of intelligence activities in international law, Sophie Duroy provides theoretical and empirical justifications to support the cutting-edge claim that states’ compliance with international law in intelligence matters serves their national security interests. This book theorises the regulation of intelligence activities under international law, identifying three layers of regulation: a clear legal framework governing intelligence activities (legality); a capacity to enforce state responsibility (accountability); and the integration of legality and accountability into responsive regulation by the international legal order (compliance).

Winner of the 2024 Polly Corrigan Book Prize

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Presenting a thorough examination of intelligence activities in international law, Sophie Duroy provides theoretical and empirical justifications to support the cutting-edge claim that states’ compliance with international law in intelligence matters serves their national security interests.

This book theorises the regulation of intelligence activities under international law, identifying three layers of regulation: a clear legal framework governing intelligence activities (legality); a capacity to enforce state responsibility (accountability); and the integration of legality and accountability into responsive regulation by the international legal order (compliance). The empirical relevance of these three layers of regulation is demonstrated through in-depth case studies of state responsibility in the CIA-led war on terror and an analysis of the accountability of Djibouti, the Gambia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States for conduct in the CIA-led war on terror. Overall, the author shows that the most reliable path to long-term national security is the effective regulation of intelligence activities under international law.

Making an original contribution to existing theories of compliance and regulation, as well as the law of state responsibility and its enforcement, this book will be essential for students and scholars of public international law, human rights, intelligence and security studies, and international relations. It will also be a valuable resource for practitioners of international law with an interest in intelligence, state responsibility, and terrorism and security law.
Critical Acclaim
‘This exceptionally rich book deals with important and topical issues of international law and human rights, namely the international law governing intelligence agencies and their oversight, as well as accountability for the phenomenon of secret detention and torture in the so-called war on terror. It manages to combine the treatment of these two themes into a single coherent line of research. But the study does much more than that. It is methodologically highly diverse and advanced, combining doctrinal legal analysis with behavioural approaches concerning state compliance and developing models of semi-quantification and network analysis to explain why and how accountability matters for whether states choose to comply with international law. On the basis of these different but intertwined lines of research, it then argues that compliance with international law serves the national security interests of states. The outcome is highly impressive, signalling the author’s emergence as a prominent scholar, an innovative and original thinker, and a theorist.’
– Martin Scheinin, University of Oxford, UK

‘International regulation of the second oldest profession was long characterised by hypocrisy: states denounced what they routinely (if clandestinely) did themselves. In this book, Sophie Duroy argues that the years after September 11, 2001, put enormous pressure on the nascent norms regulating intelligence activities — and, counter-intuitively, strengthened those norms as a result.’
– Simon Chesterman, National University of Singapore

‘Dr Duroy’s book provides a sophisticated analysis of the application of international law to the work of the intelligence community. But more than that, it explores how states can be held accountable for their unlawful intelligence activities. By focusing on issues of accountability and compliance, this book brings new research to the debate and should be widely read by security studies scholars, international lawyers, practitioners, and policymakers.’
– Russell Buchan, University of Sheffield, UK
Contents
Contents: 1. Introduction to The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law PART I LEGALITY 2. Intelligence activities and international law 3. Mapping state responsibility in the CIA war on terror PART II ACCOUNTABILITY 4. International legal accountability for an internationally wrongful act resulting from intelligence activities 5. Effective accountability 6. International legal accountability in the CIA war on terror PART III COMPLIANCE 7. State compliance with international law in intelligence matters: a behavioural approach 8. Epilogue: comprehensive regulation in the twenty-first-century security landscape Index
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