844
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
for either tightening or relaxing the traditional demands of due process); but rather that the modern judicial order is in its relevant essentials not the same device that in former times could always be enforced by civil contempt. So adjustments will have to be made. We will have to decide at some point which modern injunctions sufficiently resemble their historical namesakes to warrant the same extraordinary means of enforcement. We need not draw that line in the present case, and so I am content to join the opinion of the Court.
Justice Ginsburg, with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The issue in this case is whether the contempt proceedings brought against the petitioner unions are to be classified as "civil" or "criminal." As the Court explains, if those proceedings were "criminal," then the unions were entitled under our precedents to a jury trial, and the disputed fines, imposed in bench proceedings, could not stand. See ante, at 826-827.
I
Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U. S. 418 (1911), as the Court notes, see ante, at 827-828, is a pathmarking case in this area. The civil contempt sanction, Gompers instructs, is designed "to coerce the defendant to do the thing required by the order for the benefit of the complainant," rather than "to vindicate the authority of the law." 221 U. S., at 442. The sanction operates coercively because it applies continuously until the defendant performs the discrete, "affirmative act" required by the court's order, for example, production of a document or presentation of testimony. Ibid. The civil contemnor thus " 'carries the keys of his prison in his own pocket' ": At any moment, "[h]e can end the sentence and discharge himself . . . by doing what he had previously refused to do." Ibid., quoting In re Nevitt, 117 F. 448, 461 (CA8 1902).
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