The Supreme Court factor
Another question is what appeals courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, would do with a contempt ruling against the Trump administration.
Parillo’s research found that while district court judges are willing to issue contempt findings, sanctions are rarely upheld on appeal.
“There are no opinions of the Supreme Court on the subject," he wrote. “When the courts of appeals hear a potentially relevant case, they usually dispose of it on narrow, case-specific grounds in a deliberate attempt to avoid the bigger and more portentous issues about whether and when judges can use contempt sanctions against the federal government.”
In a 1911 ruling, in Gompers v. Buck’s Stove & Range Co., the Supreme Court described the need for courts to be able to enforce their orders through contempt but do so sparingly.
“The power of courts to punish for contempts is a necessary and integral part of the independence of the judiciary, and is absolutely essential to the performance of the duties imposed on them by law,” the opinion says. “Without it, they are mere boards of arbitration, whose judgments and decrees would only be advisory."
The justices warned that without the power of contempt, the authority of the court would be derided.
“If a party can make himself a judge of the validity of orders which have been issued, and by his own disobedience set them aside,” the opinion warns, "then are the courts impotent, and what the Constitution now fittingly calls the ‘judicial power of the United States’ would be a mere mockery.”