Out of the Legal Wilderness: Peacetime Espionage, International Law and the Existence of Customary Exceptions

摘要

For many years, international legal scholars insisted that there was little interaction between international law and espionage. This argument is no longer taken seriously. Nowadays, scholars readily admit that international law applies to espionage, and accept that certain forms of espionage run afoul of various prohibitive international legal rules. But the battle-lines have been redrawn. Scholars wishing to perverse espionage as a national security tool have instead advanced the argument that, even if certain forms of espionage violate international law, this conduct is nevertheless lawful due to the existence of permissive CIL exceptions.