out of court.[25] In the United States, the Judiciary
Act of 1789 in section 17[26] conferred power on all courts of the
United States "to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of
said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before
the same." The only limitation placed on this power was that summary
attachment was made a negation of all other modes of punishment. The
abuse of this extensive power led, following the unsuccessful
impeachment of Judge James H. Peck of the Federal District Court of
Missouri, to the passage of the act of 1831 limiting the power of the
federal courts to punish contempts to misbehavior in the presence of the
courts, "or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of
justice," to the misbehavior of officers of courts in their official
capacity, and to disobedience or resistance to any lawful writ, process
or order of the court.[27]

An Inherent Power

The validity of the act of 1831 was sustained forty-three years later in
Ex parte Robinson,[28] where Justice Field for the Court propounded
principles full of potentialities for conflict. He declared: "The power
to punish for contempts is inherent in all courts; its existence is
essential to the preservation of order in judicial proceedings, and to
the enforcement of the judgments, orders, and writs of the courts, and
consequently to the due administration of justice. The moment the courts
of the United States were called into existence and invested with
jurisdiction over any subject, they become possessed of this power."
Expressing doubts concerning the validity of the act as to the Supreme
Court, he declared, however, there could be no question of its validity
as applied to the lower courts on the ground that they are created by
Congress and that their "powers and duties depend upon the act calling
them into existence, or subsequent acts extending or limiting their
jurisdiction."[29] With the passage of time, later adjudications,
especially after 1890, came to place more emphasis on the inherent power
of courts to punish contempts than upon the power of Congress to
regulate summary attachment. By 1911 the Court was saying that the
contempt power must be exercised by a court without referring the issues
of fact or law to another tribunal or to a jury in the same
tribunal.[30] In Michaelson _v._ United States[31] the Supreme Court
intentionally placed a narrow interpretation upon those sections of the
Clay