"Operational independence of the police": Notes on the (in)adequacy of a legal term

This paper critically examines the use of the term "operational independence of the police" in the provisions of the Police Act of the Republic of Serbia. Following the introduction, the second part of the paper presents a lexical and semantic analysis of the term, while the third part provides its theoretical and legal examination. The fourth part contains a comparison of the term with existing positive-law solutions. The author concludes that the use of the term "operational independence of the police" in a special Statute is, in principle, legally possible if its meaning (the content of the concept it denotes) is clearly explained and limited by generally known and unambiguous expressions within the framework of that Statute. If this is truly necessary, the author believes that it would be more appropriate, in a special Statute, to use the legal term "autonomy" to denote the relationship between the police, on the one hand, and the Minister of the Interior, other state authorities, and non-state entities, on the other, as this term better reflects the constitutional position of public administration and the police as part of it.