In every jurisdiction with which I am familiar, 'contempt of court' is cited ONLY when there is either 1) a direct act of disrespect in court to a trial judge or panel of judges, 2) a direct act of disrespect to a judge or judges in camera, as for instance in a judge' chambers when opposing counsel is present, or 3) less enforceable in most jurisdictions, but still present on many states' books, a direct act of disrespect outside the courtroom, but which is unmistakeably directed to/at a trial judge, as for instance counsel walking out of the courtroom onto the steps of the courts building and calling a press conference and stating (say) that the judge is an incompetent piece of crap who has been bought off.
This last example is more and more problematic for courts (for whom I shed exactly NO tears), because of more and more civil actions for malfeasance and/or extrajudicial behavious occurring. (Awwwww, poor babies, eh?)
I may well have missed something, but ignoring a supreme court decision will never, I should imagine, involve contempt of court -- possibly excepting such an action by a igh official of the executive or legislative branch -- because 1) the requirement of directness, and 2) because goobermint putzes in the courts, whether in the executive or legislative branch, haven't the stomach to try to bring a contempt of court action against another branch of the goobermint.
Me? I sit quietly and have contempt for the whole lot, judiciary included.
FReegards, m'FRiend
thanks so much for that great response.
But if you’ll be kind enough to indulge my curiosity again—What if just to illustrate an analogy to what these guys have done, we take it the nearly opposite direction.
What if say- a court says, for example, Georgia’s state ban on gay marriage is ucnstitutional. Then in response to this the Georgia legislature enacts a law that says no same sex marriage will be recognized by the state, and anyone who gets same sex married has to pay a fine of $50,000. Would the court do anything about this? and if so, what can the court do?
