Pojęcie konstytucyjnego organu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w przepisach karnych

The term ‘constitutional state body’ is used not only by legal science but may also be found in legal provisions, including criminal law. It appears, however, that interpretation of that term in criminal law context is not uniform and there are many definitions suggested. Such situation may raise serious concerns from the constitutional perspective. The concept of a constitutional body of the Republic of Poland, whenever found in criminal law provisions, should be interpreted as denoting any state body which is individually mentioned in the text of the Constitution. Such a definition is intuitive and can be easily understood by everyone, contrary to other, narrow interpretations. Although restrictive method of interpretation may be common in criminal law, it seems in this case to be based on random criteria. In order to avoid the widely varying interpretations in future, it would be a good idea to provide the notion of a constitutional state body with a legal definition. Another option would be to simply enumerate the state bodies which are to be protected.