Lawfare Daily: David Noll on Civil Contempt Against a Defiant Executive

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor and Research Director at Lawfare, sits down with David Noll, a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, to discuss his new Lawfare Research Report, “Civil Contempt Against a Defiant Executive.” They talk about the widespread assumption that the judiciary is powerless if the executive branch chooses to defy court orders, largely because enforcement mechanisms like the U.S. Marshals Service reside within the executive branch.

Noll argues that this view is mistaken and overlooks the significant enforcement powers the courts possess that are independent of the executive. Noll and Rozenshtein discuss non-custodial sanctions like stripping officials of immunity, levying substantial personal fines, and imposing professional discipline. They also explore the arrest power, noting that the U.S. Marshals have a statutory duty to enforce all lawful court orders that may supersede a presidential directive, and that courts retain a historical power to appoint their own deputies to enforce contempt citations if the Marshals were to refuse. Noll concludes that a conflict between the branches would likely be more protracted and contested than is commonly believed.

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising.
0:04.4	To access an ad-free version of the Lawfare podcast, become a material supporter of Lawfare at
0:11.5	patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare.
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1:43.0	When the court has given an executive branch official the opportunity to comply with an order and given them an opportunity to explain themselves and that we
1:47.4	still don't see compliance, the court can make findings that the official is violating clearly
1:54.4	established law. It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Alan Rosenstein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and research director at Lawfare with David Noll, Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School.
2:07.6	But if you dig into the statute that says what the marshals are supposed to do, enforcing legal process is still the primary duty of the marshal service. So the marshals exist
2:21.0	in order to carry out process of the United States, which of course includes enforcement of
2:28.2	court orders. I talked with David about his new lawfare research paper, civil contempt against
	...

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