Cite as: 512 U. S. 821 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
in this case, is what procedural protections are due before any particular contempt penalty may be imposed. Because civil contempt sanctions are viewed as nonpunitive and avoidable, fewer procedural protections for such sanctions have been required. To the extent that such contempts take on a punitive character, however, and are not justified by other considerations central to the contempt power, criminal procedural protections may be in order.
The traditional justification for the relative breadth of the contempt power has been necessity: Courts independently must be vested with "power to impose silence, respect, and decorum, in their presence, and submission to their lawful mandates, and . . . to preserve themselves and their officers from the approach and insults of pollution." Anderson v. Dunn, 6 Wheat. 204, 227 (1821). Courts thus have embraced an inherent contempt authority, see Gompers, 221 U. S., at 450; Ex parte Robinson, 19 Wall. 505, 510 (1874), as a power "necessary to the exercise of all others," United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 34 (1812).
But the contempt power also uniquely is " 'liable to abuse.' " Bloom, 391 U. S., at 202, quoting Ex parte Terry, 128 U. S. 289, 313 (1888). Unlike most areas of law, where a legislature defines both the sanctionable conduct and the penalty to be imposed, civil contempt proceedings leave the offended judge solely responsible for identifying, prosecuting, adjudicating, and sanctioning the contumacious conduct. Contumacy "often strikes at the most vulnerable and human qualities of a judge's temperament," Bloom, 391 U. S., at 202, and its fusion of legislative, executive, and judicial powers "summons forth . . . the prospect of 'the most tyrannical licentiousness,' " Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S. A., 481 U. S. 787, 822 (1987) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), quoting Anderson, 6 Wheat., at 228. Accordingly, "in [criminal] contempt cases an even more compelling argument can be made [than in ordinary criminal cases] for providing
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