992
Stevens, J., dissenting
agree with the Court that the answer to this question is so clear as to justify summary reversal.
In the majority of the cases relied on by the Court, the summary contempt power was invoked to punish conduct that threatened to disrupt the court's ongoing proceedings. See, e. g., United States v. Wilson, 421 U. S. 309 (1975). A more substantial question arises when the summary contempt proceeding is not invoked to prevent disruption of the trial, but to punish action that has already occurred. As Justice Frankfurter recognized in his dissenting opinion in Sacher v. United States, 343 U. S. 1 (1952), concerns about the adequacy of procedural safeguards are heightened in cases involving summary contempt procedures:
"Summary punishment of contempt is concededly an exception to the requirements of Due Process. Necessity dictates the departure. Necessity must bound its limits. In this case, the course of events to the very end of the trial shows that summary measures were not necessary to enable the trial to go on. Departure from established judicial practice, which makes it unfitting for a judge who is personally involved to sit in his own case, was therefore unwarranted. . . .
"This, then, was not a situation in which, even though a judge was personally involved as the target of the contemptuous conduct, peremptory action against contemnors was necessary to maintain order and to salvage the proceedings. Where such action is necessary for the decorous continuance of a pending trial, disposition by another judge of a charge of contempt is impracticable. Interruption for a hearing before a separate judge would disrupt the trial and thus achieve the illicit purpose of a contemnor." Id., at 36-37, 39.
We recognized these limits to a court's summary contempt power in In re McConnell, 370 U. S. 230 (1962), where we granted plenary review and set aside a $100 contempt sanc-
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