By: Joshua T. Carback

Contempt power in American law is something of an arcanum imperii—a source of legal authority with mysterious origins. The purpose of this Article is to trace the evolution of the contempt power in Maryland law from its English roots through the colonial period up to the American Revolution. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Maryland evolved from a feudal plantation province into an industrialized modern republic. England ascended to world power status during the same timeframe—an achievement due in no small part to a robust legal system. Contempt power was an instrumental component of that system. The transmission of the motherland’s laws abroad was as complex and variable as the circumstances of her children. The substance and procedure of the law of contempt in the Kingdom of England and in the Province of Maryland, however, were strikingly the same. Contempt power was a simple and efficient tool for upholding the dignity and authority of legal institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Though feudalism perished under the sword of the American Revolution, contempt power survived and translated into the Maryland Declaration of Rights and Constitution of 1776. The notion of “constitutional rights” within the new framework of government still encompasses the law of contempt, including the ancient doctrine of contempt of the sovereign. Contempt power earned its place in the novus ordo seclorum.

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