828
Opinion of the Court
they have merit, the Government should not prevail; if they are groundless, the Government's interests will not be compromised by their consideration.
We have yet to consider two other purposes said to be advanced by disentitlement: The need to redress the indignity visited upon the District Court by Degen's absence from the criminal proceeding, and the need to deter flight from criminal prosecution by Degen and others. Both interests are substantial, but disentitlement is too blunt an instrument for advancing them. Without resolving whether Degen is a fugitive in all the senses of the word debated by the parties, we acknowledge disquiet at the spectacle of a criminal defendant reposing in Switzerland, beyond the reach of our criminal courts, while at the same time mailing papers to the court in a related civil action and expecting them to be honored. Cf. United States v. Sharpe, 470 U. S. 675, 681-682, n. 2 (1985). A court-made rule striking Degen's claims and entering summary judgment against him as a sanction, however, would be an arbitrary response to the conduct it is supposed to redress or discourage.
The right of a citizen to defend his property against attack in a court is corollary to the plaintiff's right to sue there. McVeigh v. United States, 11 Wall., at 267. For this reason we have held it unconstitutional to use disentitlement similar to this as punishment for rebellion against the United States, ibid., or, in at least one instance, for contempt of court, Hovey v. Elliott, 167 U. S. 409, 413-414 (1897). We need not, and do not, intimate a view on whether enforcement of a disentitlement rule under proper authority would violate due process, cf. Blackmer v. United States, 284 U. S. 421 (1932). It remains the case, however, that the sanction of disentitlement is most severe and so could disserve the dignitary purposes for which it is invoked. The dignity of a court derives from the respect accorded its judgments. That respect is eroded, not enhanced, by too free a recourse to rules foreclosing consideration of claims on the merits.
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