Any person, corporation or association willfully disobeying any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command of any district court of the United States, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review established by section 103 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1803), or any court of the District of Columbia, by doing any act or thing therein, or thereby forbidden, if the act or thing so done be of such character as to constitute also a criminal offense under any statute of the United States or under the laws of any State in which the act was committed, shall be prosecuted for such contempt as provided in section 3691 of this title and shall be punished by a fine under this title or imprisonment, or both.
Such fine shall be paid to the United States or to the complainant or other party injured by the act constituting the contempt, or may, where more than one is so damaged, be divided or apportioned among them as the court may direct, but in no case shall the fine to be paid to the United States exceed, in case the accused is a natural person, the sum of $1,000, nor shall such imprisonment exceed the term of six months.
This section shall not be construed to relate to contempts committed in the presence of the court, or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice, nor to contempts committed in disobedience of any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command entered in any suit or action brought or prosecuted in the name of, or on behalf of, the United States, but the same, and all other cases of contempt not specifically embraced in this section may be punished in conformity to the prevailing usages at law.
For purposes of this section, the term “State” includes a State of the United States, the District of Columbia, and any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States.
Notes of Decisions
Cited in
118
cases (
7 in the last 5 years), 1940–2025 · leading case:
United States v. Kimsey, 668 F.3d 691 (9th Cir. 2012).
United States v. Kimsey, 668 F.3d 691 (9th Cir. 2012).
· cites it 12× “In the ease before us, Kimsey was convicted of criminal contempt of court in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 402 . The contemptuous act for which the district judge convicted Kimsey, who is not a lawyer, was the “ghostwriting” of eight pleadings for a pro se litigant in a civil lawsuit.”
Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165 (1958).
· cites it 6× “" [10] At the present time, 18 U. S. C. § 402 contains the definitional provision formerly in § 21 of the Clayton Act and expressly refers to 18 U.”
United States v. Barnett, 376 U.S. 681 (1964).
· cites it 6× “738 -740, now codified as 18 U. S. C. §§ 402 and 3691. These sections guarantee the right to a jury trial in contempt proceedings arising out of disobedience to orders "of any district court of the United States or any court of the District of Columbia," provided that the…”
United States v. Pyle, 518 F. Supp. 139 (E.D. Pa. 1981).
· cites it 12× “Upon consideration of the issues raised on appeal here, this Court concluded that, while the magistrate did have subject matter jurisdiction to try the defendants and the injunction is not constitutionally defective, the defendants were nevertheless improperly denied their right…”
Cheff v. Schnackenberg, 384 U.S. 373 (1966).
· cites it 4× “[9] 18 U. S. C. § 402 (1964 ed.). [10] Congress might, for example, determine that breaches of court decorum are generally of so minor a nature as to render it advisable to forgo the possibility of any except minor penalties in favor of maintaining procedures for quick…”
Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194 (1968).
· cites it 2× “738 , § 21, now 18 U. S. C. § 402 . Circumscription of the contempt power was carried further in the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which extended the right to jury trial to contempt cases arising out of injunctions issued in labor disputes.”
Juan Aquas Romero v. Drummond Co. Inc., 480 F.3d 1234 (11th Cir. 2007).
“18 U.S.C. § 402 . The three elements of criminal contempt are (1) a lawful and reasonably specific order that (2) the defendant has violated (3) willfully.”
Sacher v. United States, 343 U.S. 1 (1952).
· cites it 2× “§ 402 , "Contempts constituting crimes," provides for criminal contempt prosecutions of acts which are in themselves criminal as well as contemptuous, but adds: "This section shall not be construed to relate to contempts committed in the presence of the court, or so near thereto…”
United States v. Bowers, 847 F.3d 1280 (10th Cir. 2017).
· cites it 4× “Third, he argues that his sentence is illegal because 18 U.S.C. § 402 limits sentences for crimes such as those he committed to no more than six months.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the
Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and
treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.