836
Opinion of the Court
scribes a detailed code of conduct, it is more appropriate to identify the character of the entire decree. Cf. Hicks, 485 U. S., at 638, n. 10 (internal quotation marks omitted) (Where both civil and criminal relief is imposed "the criminal feature of the order is dominant and fixes its character for purposes of review").
Despite respondents' urging, we also are not persuaded that dispositive significance should be accorded to the fact that the trial court prospectively announced the sanctions it would impose. Had the trial court simply levied the fines after finding the union guilty of contempt, the resulting "determinate and unconditional" fines would be considered "solely and exclusively punitive." Id., at 632-633 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Penfield Co. of Cal. v. SEC, 330 U. S. 585 (1947). Respondents nevertheless contend that the trial court's announcement of a prospective fine schedule allowed the union to "avoid paying the fine[s] simply by performing the . . . act required by the court's order," Hicks, 485 U. S., at 632, and thus transformed these fines into coercive, civil ones. Respondents maintain here, as the Virginia Supreme Court held below, that the trial court could have imposed a daily civil fine to coerce the union into compliance, and that a prospective fine schedule is indistinguishable from such a sanction.
Respondents' argument highlights the difficulties encountered in parsing coercive civil and criminal contempt fines. The fines imposed here concededly are difficult to distinguish either from determinate, punitive fines or from initially suspended, civil fines. Ultimately, however, the fact that the trial court announced the fines before the contumacy, rather than after the fact, does not in itself justify respondents' conclusion that the fines are civil or meaningfully distinguish these penalties from the ordinary criminal law. Due process traditionally requires that criminal laws provide prior notice both of the conduct to be prohibited and of the sanction to be imposed. The trial court here simply announced the pen-
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