Coercion, Defiance and Competing Audiences: Understanding the Meaning of Contempt and Sanctions to “True Believer” Litigants

Courts have substantial powers to punish entities that disobey their orders. However, despite potentially severe repercussions, litigants with intensely held ideologies—what this Article calls “true believer” litigants—sometimes choose to defy court orders, which leads to sanctions and contempt charges. This Article argues that, rather than reflecting mistakes or misunderstandings of the law, these choices may reflect subjectively rational decisions, based on these litigants’ values. By running the risk of sanctions and contempt, the true believer litigants take stands against their opponents, publicly reaffirm their commitments to their causes, and grow their statures within their movements. Additionally, refusing an order to produce incriminating evidence may shift the public discourse from the content of that evidence to the purported misuse of the judicial process by the true believer litigants’ opponents.

This Article considers the theoretical framework of the law of contempt, explores five cases of true believer litigants—ranging from an environmentalist to neo-Nazis—who violated court orders, and then considers the implications of those case studies for the law of contempt.

*Ropes & Gray LLP, New York, NY; J.D., Columbia Law School, 2021; B.A., Bowdoin College, 2016. The original draft of this paper was written for an Advanced Civil Procedure seminar taught by Robbie Kaplan and Gabrielle Tenzer.

Suggested Citation: Woodworth Winmill, Coercion, Defiance and Competing Audiences: Understanding the Meaning of Contempt and Sanctions to “True Believer” Litigants, 126 Penn St. L. Rev. Penn Statim 10 (2021).

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