Contempt of court

The power of the court to ensure obedience to its orders for the benefit of those in whose favour they were made would be inappropriately curtailed if, in addition to having to show that a defendant had breached the order, it was also necessary to establish, and to the criminal standard, that he had done so in the belief that what he had done was a breach of the order—particularly when a belief that it was not a breach might have rested on the slenderest of foundations or on convenient advice which had been plainly wrong. Although contempt of court for breach of a civil order constituted criminal proceedings, that did not mean that they were not also civil proceedings.