Cite as: 509 U. S. 688 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
The 1831 amendment of the Judiciary Act still would not have given rise to orders of the sort at issue here, however, since there was a long common-law tradition against judicial orders prohibiting violation of the law. Injunctions, for example, would not issue to forbid infringement of criminal or civil laws, in the absence of some separate injury to private interest. See, e. g., 3 Blackstone, supra, at *426, n. 1; J. High, Law of Injunctions § 23, pp. 15-17, and notes (1873) (citing English cases); C. Beach, Law of Injunctions §§ 58-59, pp. 71-73 (1895) (same). The interest protected by the criminal or civil prohibition was to be vindicated at law—and though equity might enjoin harmful acts that happened to violate civil or criminal law, it would not enjoin violation of civil or criminal law as such. See, e. g., Sparhawk v. Union Passenger R. Co., 54 Pa. St. 401, 422-424 (1867) (refusing to enjoin railroad's violation of Sunday closing law); Attorney General v. Utica Insurance Co., 2 Johns. Ch. 371, 378 (N. Y. 1817) (refusing to enjoin violation of banking statute).
It is not surprising, therefore, that the double jeopardy issue presented here—whether prosecution for criminal contempt based on violation of a criminal law incorporated into a court order bars a subsequent prosecution for the criminal offense—did not arise at common law, or even until quite recently in American cases. See generally Zitter, Contempt Finding as Precluding Substantive Criminal Charges Relating to Same Transaction, 26 A. L. R. 4th 950, 953-956 (1983). English and earlier American cases do report instances in which prosecution for criminal contempt of court—as originally understood—did not bar a subsequent prosecution for a criminal offense based on the same conduct. See, e. g., King v. Lord Ossulston, 2 Str. 1107, 93 Eng. Rep. 1063 (K. B. 1739); State v. Yancy, 4 N. C. 133 (1814). But those contempt prosecutions were for disruption of judicial process, in which the disruptive conduct happened also to be criminal.
The Double Jeopardy Clause, whose application to this new context we are called upon to consider, provides that no
695
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007