Albert Smith Bigelow, William Huntington, George Willoughby and Orion Sherwood v. United States

This is an appeal after conviction and sentence of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii for criminal contempts of court. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 , 1294(1). The criminal contempt convictions resulted from disobedience of an injunction prohibiting the defendants from sailing their vessel, the Golden Rule, from Honolulu harbor, or otherwise moving it, without the permission of the district court. The purpose of the injunction was to prevent appellants from interfering with the “Hardtack series” of nuclear tests in the Pacific. The fact that appellants disobeyed the injunction is not disputed. Appellants seek to raise the issue of the constitutionality of a section of the Atomic Energy Act, as well as certain regulations issued by the Atomic Energy Commission pursuant thereto.

We do not reach such issues. As was so colorfully stated by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his concurring opinion in the Mine Workers case,

And in the words of Mr. Chief Justice Vinson, in the same case: “The defendants, in making their private determination of the law, acted at their peril. Their disobedience is punishable as criminal contempt.”

We think this reasoning applicable here. The…