The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law

Elgar International Law series

Sophie Duroy, School of Law, University of Essex, UK

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).

‘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.’
——西蒙•切斯特曼国家大学sity 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