일반경찰법 법리의 발전양상에 관한 개관적 연구 ― 광복 80년 동안 전개된 일반경찰법 법리들에 관한 비판적ㆍ담론적 접근을 중심으로 ―

The article’s central problem-setting is threefold. First, in the immediate post-liberation period, Korean police-law scholarship emerged under the dual task of dismantling the colonial “governing police” model while establishing a liberal rule-of-law order. In this phase, police power was largely understood as an exceptional public power confined to the function of hazard prevention and the maintenance of public order, and its justification was anchored in a liberal hazard-prevention doctrine (often described as the principle of a “minimal police”). Second, following the 1987 constitutional order, general police law was reconfigured within a fundamental-rights-centered administrative-law paradigm. The hazard-prevention dogmatics were refined through their tighter integration with rule-of-law control principles—most notably the principle of legality (statutory reservation), the requirement of clarity, and the proportionality principle—so that police intervention would be justified and constrained within a constitutional order of values. At the same time, the development and reception of the doctrine of the state’s positive obligations to protect fundamental rights contributed to a re-recognition of police action as a principal instrument for realizing the state’s responsibility to guarantee internal security, thereby expanding the justificatory horizon beyond ex post harm removal. Third, in the twenty-first-century “risk society,” complex and atypical threats—such as terrorism, organized crime, pandemics, environmental risks, and large-scale disasters—have become routinized, exposing the explanatory limits of a traditional intervention model centered on “concrete danger.” In response, debates over new or intensified categories—such as suspected danger, apparent danger, and pre-frontier (Vorfeld) intervention—have moved to the center of general police-law scholarship. Against this background, the article examines and reconstructs major doctrinal pillars: (1) a critique of the (substantive) material concept of police as increasingly unhelpful for contemporary governance; (2) a re-examination of the necessity and constitutional design of general authorization clauses, including their structural alternatives within Korean law; (3) a constitutional re-articulation of “public order” grounded in the constitutional order of values; and (4) a systematic treatment of danger, suspected danger, apparent danger, and pre-frontier intervention for crime prevention. It further revisits (5) police responsibility doctrines, (6) police coercion—especially immediate coercion—and (7) the rules on police/administrative-order costs and compensation for special sacrifice. The article does not propose a wholesale abandonment of hazard-prevention dogmatics; instead, it argues for a “modified development” that preserves the rule-of-law control structure while recalibrating the scope and function of doctrines to meet the changed environment of security and risk prevention. Finally, by addressing current issues such as the revision of the Act on the Performance of Duties by Police Officers and the concretization of crime-prevention rationales within administrative police law, the article points toward a reconstruction of police law as a normative system that institutionally mediates the balance between security and freedom. In conclusion, it argues for the establishment of “safety administrative law” as an overarching conceptual framework encompassing both police administrative law and administrative order law, which—though diverging in emphasis between hazard prevention and risk governance—must co-exist and interact within a common doctrinal architecture.