Prize-win­ner’s Talk: The 2024 Pol­ly Cor­ri­g­an Book Prize

The Polly Corrigan Book Prize committee is delighted to announce that the winner of the Prize for 2024 is:

Sophie Duroy, The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023)

Since the events of September 11, 2001, and a subsequent ‘global war on terror’, scholars have wrestled with a ‘liberty–security conundrum’ that positions security and liberty as competing interests. The protection of security, it has been suggested, occasionally necessitates uncomfortable compromises in the rule of law and with human rights. Sophie Duroy’s pathbreaking and meticulously researched work confronts this binary and underscores the consequences that result from intelligence operations that safeguard national security at the expense of international law and universal human rights.

In the aftermath of 9/11, some states were tempted to implement narrow and short-term approaches to national security that marginalised root causes and amplified coercion and repression. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, Sophie Duroy demonstrates that assumptions surrounding the relative costs and benefits of intelligence practices that came into tension with international law need to be reconsidered. Noncompliance with international legal norms, the Regulation of Intelligence Activities posits, is incompatible with effective intelligence, corrodes global security, and acts against the long-term national interests of the states involved. Only by rejecting seemingly quick and questionable national security fixes, this book maintains, can states improve national security outcomes and, at the same time, ensure compliance with international legal obligations.

Looking to the future, Sophie Duroy notes that controversies associated with intelligence practice in the post-9/11 era have led international courts to seek accountability for breaches of international law and to develop new regulatory models for intelligence activity. While limited, this significant development is framed as a positive move towards increasing legal compliance and enhancing global security.

Based on exemplary research, rich in evidence and argument, and addressing an intelligence issue of enduring importance, this book challenges our understanding of how best to respond to evolving national security threats and remain on the right side of the law.