846
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
Our cases, however, have consistently resorted to the distinction between criminal and civil contempt to determine whether certain constitutional protections, required in criminal prosecutions, apply in contempt proceedings. See, e. g., United States v. Dixon, 509 U. S. 688, 696 (1993) ("We have held that [certain] constitutional protections for criminal defendants . . . apply in nonsummary criminal contempt prosecutions just as they do in other criminal prosecutions.") (citing cases). And the Court has repeatedly relied upon Gompers' delineation of the distinction between criminal and civil contempt. See, e. g., Hicks v. Feiock, 485 U. S. 624, 631-633, 635-636 (1988). The parties, accordingly, have presented their arguments within the Gompers framework.
Two considerations persuade me that the contempt proceedings in this case should be classified as "criminal" rather than "civil." First, were we to accept the logic of Bagwell's argument that the fines here were civil, because "conditional" and "coercive," no fine would elude that categorization. The fines in this case were "conditional," Bagwell says, because they would not have been imposed if the unions had complied with the injunction. The fines would have been "conditional" in this sense, however, even if the court had not supplemented the injunction with its fines schedule; indeed, any fine is "conditional" upon compliance or noncompliance before its imposition. Cf. ante, at 837 (the unions' ability to avoid imposition of the fines was "indistinguishable from the ability of any ordinary citizen to avoid a criminal sanction by conforming his behavior to the law"). Furthermore, while the fines were "coercive," in the sense that one of their purposes was to encourage union compliance with the injunction, criminal contempt sanctions may also "coerce" in this same sense, for they, too, "ten[d] to prevent a repetition of the disobedience." Gompers, 221 U. S., at 443. Bagwell's thesis that the fines were civil, because "condi-
Page: Index Previous 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007