What is a Gag Order?

Although it can be issued by a government in the form of a law or executive decree, and in other instances by a private entity like a corporation as a part of corporate policy, a "gag order", as it is commonly known today is an order issued by a court of law usually before the start of or during a trial or other high profile legal proceeding.

As most commonly used, a judge will impose a gag order in a case to prohibit the opposing parties involved from disclosing information about the case to the public, especially any members of the news media. A gag order may prohibit the disclosure of only specific details in a case or it may prohibit the parties from speaking at all about a case. A party to a case that violates a Court's gag order can be held in contempt of court subjecting the violator to appropriate monetary fines or jail in certain instances.

A judge will issue a gag order in cases where the judge believes that the interests of one or both sides will be unfairly prejudiced if the public becomes aware of certain information. The intent of a judge's gag order may also be to prevent the the parties, especially their lawyers, from trying to create favorable public sentiment in the newspapers or on television for their side. This is a common attorney tactic in high profile cases particularly in instances where a jury for the case has not yet been selected. An example of a judge using employing a gag order for this reason is the 1996 civil case against O.J. Simpson for violating the civil rights of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson where the parties were prohibited from discussing, debating, or making statements about the case to members of the public.

A judge presiding in an American courtroom can order that news cameras and other media devices be banned from a courtroom to preserve the dignity of the proceedings when they are threatened. This also occurred in the 1996 O.J. Simpson civil trial. However, under the freedom of the press provisions of the First Amendment, American courts do not have the authority to subject members of the media to any kind of gag order. In many other countries like Great Britain and Canada this is not the case and courts can order the media not to disclose certain aspects of a case or of the criminal investigation that preceded it. However, the viability of ordering the media not to disclose sensitive information about a high profile case has been severely compromised by the rise of the Internet. The most recent example was a Canadian court's May 2008 gag order in the case of Baby Abbygail Dice . In that case, the judge prohibited the media from reporting the details of why a young mother was criminally charged for disposing of her dead infant's body.

While the local media respected the Court's order, case information found its way to the public via the Internet. Internet users can see this firsthand by clicking over to Facebook, and logging in. There viewers can find page after page about the Baby Abbygail Dice case devoted to details and speculation about her death and the reasons for charging the mother. Short of closing the courtroom to all but the parties, whom the court can control, gag orders directed to the media will have a limited future since they are proving impossible to enforce.

As to how the term "gag order" got started, in years past a "gag order" was literally a Court's order during a trial to place a gag into a defendant's mouth and to shackle his hands and legs to prevent a defendant in a criminal case from further disrupting the proceedings. It happens but very rarely in modern cases and is obviously an option of last resort due to the effect of using shackles and a gag on the defendant in front of a jury, but it does occur. In the famous 1968 Chicago Seven trial federal Judge Julius J. Hoffman ordered Black Panther leader Bobby Seale bound and gagged for disrupting the proceedings.