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 CONTEMPT OF COURT, in English law, any disobedience or disrespect to the authority or privileges of a legislative body, or interference with the administration of a court of justice.

1. The High Court of Parliament. Each of the two houses of Parliament has by the law and custom of parliament power to protect its freedom, dignity and authority against insult, disregard or violence by resort to its own process and not to ordinary courts of law and without having its process interfered with by those courts. The nature and limits of this authority to punish for contempt have been the subject of not infrequent conflict with the courts of law, from the time when Lord Chief Justice Holt threatened to commit the speaker for attempting to stop the trial of Ashby v. White (1701), as a breach of privilege, to the cases of Burdett v. Abbott (1810), Stockdale v. Hansard and Howard v. Gosset (1842, 1843), and Bradlaugh v. Gosset (1834). It is now the accepted view that the power of either House to punish contempt is exceptional and derived from ancient usage, and does not flow from their being courts of record. Orders for committal by the Commons are effectual only while the House sits; orders by the Lords may be for a time specified, in which event prorogation does not operate as a discharge of the offender. It was at one time considered that the privilege of committing for contempt was inherent in every deliberative body invested with authority by the constitution, and consequently that colonial legislative bodies had by the nature of their functions the power to commit for contempt. But in Kielley v. Carson (1843; 4 Moore, P.C. 63) it was held that the power belonged to parliament by ancient usage only and not on the theory above stated, and in each colony it is necessary to inquire how far the colonial legislature has acquired, by order in council or charter or from the imperial legislature, power to punish breach of privilege by imprisonment or committal for contempt. This power has in some cases been given directly, in others by authority to make laws and regulations under sanctions like those enforced by the Houses of the imperial parliament. In the case of Nova Scotia the provincial assembly has power to give itself by statute authority to commit for contempt (Fielding v. Thomas, 1896; L.R.A.C. 600). In Barton v. Taylor (1886; 11 A.C. 197) the competence of the legislative assembly of New South Wales to make standing orders punishing contempt was recognized to exist under the colonial constitution, but the particular standing orders under consideration are held not to cover the acts which had been punished. (See May, Parl. Pr., 10th ed., 1896; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, 3rd ed., 1897.)

2. Courts of Justice. The term contempt of court, when used with reference to the courts or persons to whom the exercise of the judicial functions of the crown has been delegated, means insult offered to such court or person by deliberate defiance of its authority, disobedience to its orders, interruption of its proceedings or interference with the due course of justice, or any conduct calculated or tending to bring the authority or administration of the law into disrespect or disregard, or to interfere with or prejudice parties or witnesses during the litigation. The ingenuity of the judges and of those who are concerned to defeat or defy justice have rendered contempt almost Protean in its character. But for practical purposes most, if not all, contempts fall within the classification which follows:—

(a) Disobedience to the judgment or order of a court commanding the doing or abstaining from a particular act, e.g. an order to execute a conveyance of property or an order on a person in a fiduciary capacity to pay into court trust moneys as to which he is an accounting party. This includes disobedience by the members of a local authority to a mandamus to do some act which they are by law bound to do; and proceedings for contempt have been taken in the case of guardians of the poor who have refused to enforce the Vaccination Acts, e.g. at Keighley and Leicester, and of town councillors who have refused to comply with an order to take specified measures to drain their borough (e.g. Worcester). This process for compelling obedience is in substance a process of civil execution for the

benefit of the injured party rather than a criminal process for punishing the disobedience; and for purposes of appeal orders dealing with these forms of contempt have hitherto been treated as civil proceedings.

(b) Disobedience by inferior judges or magistrates to the lawful order of a superior court. Such disobedience, if amounting to wilful misconduct, would usually give ground for amotion or removal from office, or for prosecution or indictment or information for misconduct (Archbold, Criminal Pleading, 147, 23rd ed.).

(c) Disobedience or misconduct by executive officers of the law, e.g. sheriffs and their bailiffs or gaolers. The contempt consists in not complying with the terms of writs or warrants sent for execution. For instance, a judge of assize having ordered the court to be cleared on account of some disturbance, the high sheriff issued a placard protesting against “this unlawful proceeding,” and “prohibiting his officer from aiding and abetting any attempt to bar out the public from free access to the court.” The lord chief justice of England, sitting in the other court, summoned the sheriff before him and fined him £500 for the contempt, and £500 more for persisting in addressing the grand jury in court, after he had been ordered to desist. A sheriff who fails to attend the assizes is liable to severe fine as being in contempt (Oswald, 51). And in Harvey’s case (1884, 26 Ch. D. 644) steps were taken to attach a sheriff who had failed to execute a writ of attachment for contempt of court in the mistaken belief that he was not entitled to break open doors to take the person in contempt. The Sheriffs Act 1887 enumerates many instances in which misconduct is punishable under that act, but reserves to superior courts of record power to deal with such misconduct as a contempt (s. 29).

(d) Misconduct or neglect of duty by subordinate officials of courts of justice, including solicitors. In these cases it is more usual for the superior authorities to remove the offender from office, or for disciplinary proceedings to be instituted by the Law Society. But in the case of an unqualified person assuming to act as a solicitor or in the case of breach of an undertaking given by a solicitor to the court, proceedings for contempt are still taken.

(e) Misconduct by parties, jurors or witnesses. Jurors who fail to attend in obedience to a jury summons and witnesses who fail to attend on subpoena are liable to punishment for contempt, and parties, counsel or solicitors who practise a fraud on the court are similarly liable.

(f) Contempt in facie curiae. “Some contempts,” says Blackstone, “may arise in the face of the court, as by rude and contumelious behaviour, by obstinacy, perverseness or prevarication, by breach of the peace, or any wilful disturbance whatever”; in other words, direct insult to or interference with a sitting court is treated as contempt of the court. It is immaterial whether the offender is juror, party, witness, counsel, solicitor or a stranger to the case at hearing, and occasionally it is found necessary to punish for contempt persons under trial for felony or misdemeanour if by violent language or conduct they interrupt the proceedings at their trial. Judges have even treated as contempt the continuance outside the court-house after warning of a noise sufficient to disturb the proceedings of the court; and in Victoria Chief Justice Higginbotham committed for contempt a builder who persisted after warning in building operations close to the central criminal court in Melbourne, which interfered with the due conduct of the business of the sittings.

(g) Attempts to prevent or interfere with the due course of justice, whether made by a person interested in a particular case or by an outsider. This branch of contempt takes many forms, such as frauds on the court by justices, solicitors or counsel (e.g. by fraudulently circularizing shareholders of a company against which a winding-up petition had been filed), tampering with witnesses by inducing them through threats or persuasion not to attend or to withhold evidence or to commit perjury, threatening judge or jury or attempting to bribe them and the like; and also by “scandalizing the court itself” by abusing