· 5/11/1914

Gompers v. United States

Citations

233 U.S. 604
34 S. Ct. 693
58 L. Ed. 1115
1914 U.S. LEXIS 1205

Syllabus

While this court cannot review by appeal or writ of error a judgment of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia punishing for contempt it may grant a writ of certiorari to review the same. Where two parties petition for writs of certiorari to review the same judgment, but the entire matter can be disposed of on one petition, the other will be denied. Where the statute of limitations was pleaded, and, after a decision that it was inapplicable, one general exception was presented on his behalf in that regard, the rights of the defendant are sufficiently preserved. The provision in Rev. Stat., § 1044, that no person shall be prosecuted for an offense not capital unless the indictment is found or information instituted within three years after commission of the offense,applies to acts of contempt not committed in the presence of the court. Provisions of the Constitution- of the .United States are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form, but are organic living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is not to be gathered simply from the words and a dictionary but by considering their origin and the line of their growth. Contempts are none the less offenses because trial by jury does not extend to them as a matter of constitutional right. The substantive portion of § 1044, Rev. Stat., is that no person shall be tried for any offense not capital except within the specified time, and the reference to form of procedure by indictment or information does not take contempts out of the statute because the procedure is by other methods than indictment of information. Qumo, whether an indictment will lie for a contempt of a court of the United States. In dealing with the punishment of crime, some rule as to limitations should be laid down, if not by Congress by this court. As the power to punish for contempt has some limit, this court regards that limit to have b

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

“If [acts of contempt] are not criminal, we are in error as to the most fundamental characteristic of crimes as that word has been understood in the English speech.”
“These contempts are infractions of the law, visited with punishment as such. If such acts are not criminal, we are in error as to the most fundamental characteristic of crimes as that word has been understood in English speech.”
“These contempts are infractions of the law, visited with punishment as such. If such acts are not criminal, we are in error as to the most fundamental characteristic of crimes as that word has been understood in English speech”
per Holmes, J.j. See also Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 669, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 1083, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966) (“Notions of what constitutes equal treatment for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause do change.”
“What follows is a natural way of expressing that the proceedings must be begun within three years; indictment and information being the usual modes by which they are begun, and very likely no other having occurred to those who drew the law.”
discussing English courts’ longstanding common law contempt power

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Holmes, Pitney, Van Devanter

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