The issue in this appeal is whether Practice Book § 986 (4)2 is a valid exercise of the judicial rule-making authority, or whether, as the trial court held, § 986 (4) is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.3 The state filed a substitute information pursuant to Practice Book § 991,4 charging the defendant, Michael L. Murray, with four counts of criminal contempt in violation of Practice Book §§ 985 and 986 (4). On the motion of the defendant, the trial court rendered a judgment dismissing the information *357because, in its view, the legislature has abrogated the judiciary’s inherent power to adjudicate a charge of contempt of court for conduct occurring outside the presence of the court. The state has appealed.5 We reverse the judgment of the trial court.
*358In March, 1990, William B. Lewis, a judge of the Superior Court, issued a temporary restraining order against the defendant, ordering him not to disclose to any person information relating to personnel matters at the Boulder, Colorado facility of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) that the defendant had obtained while serving as IBM’s area counsel in Boulder. In June, 1990, Judge Lewis issued a temporary injunction against the defendant enjoining him from disclosing certain other material, referred to as “the DeRoma and Akers material.”
Subsequently, the state brought this four count information. The state accused the defendant of “criminal contempt” in each count, and alleged in the first two counts that on March 19, 1990, and April 23, 1990, respectively, the defendant “did engage in conduct directed against the dignity and authority of the court when, in the course of a civil proceeding, he wilfully disobeyed a valid order of a judicial authority,” namely, the March, 1990 temporary restraining order issued by Judge Lewis. In the third and fourth counts, the state alleged that on January 4, 1991, the defendant “did engage in conduct directed against the dignity and authority of the court when, in the course of a civil proceeding, he wilfully disobeyed a valid order of a judicial authority,” namely, the June, 1990 temporary injunction issued by Judge Lewis. In all four counts, the state alleged that the defendant’s “criminal contempt [was] in violation of Connecticut common law as defined in Sections 985 and 986 (4) of the Practice Book.”
The defendant moved to dismiss the information pursuant to Practice Book § 815 (8).6 He asserted that: *359(1) since the enactment in 1971 of General Statutes § 51-33a, all criminal contempts of court—whether in or outside the presence of the court—are regulated by statute; (2) because this prosecution was not authorized by statute, it violates the separation of powers required by article second of the Connecticut constitution; and (3) insofar as Practice Book §§ 985 and 986 (4) authorize punishment for activity not in or critically near a court, such provisions are invalid because they go beyond the court’s inherent power and beyond statutory authority, thereby violating the separation of powers.
The trial court granted the motion to dismiss. The court reasoned that, under the doctrine of separation of powers, the classification of crimes is a legislative function, and that the legislature had performed that function with regard to criminal contempt of court by enacting General Statutes §§ 51-33* *7 and 51-33a.8 The court also reasoned that neither statute classifies as criminal the conduct proscribed by Practice Book § 986 (4), namely, “disobeying in the course of a civil *360or criminal proceeding any order of a judicial authority.” The trial court concluded, therefore, that § 986 (4) was unconstitutional as violative of the separation of powers, and the information had to be dismissed pursuant to Practice Book § 815 (8). This appeal followed.
The state claims that the trial court improperly concluded that (1) the legislature has abrogated the court’s inherent power to punish, as criminal contempt of court, conduct occurring outside the court’s presence that violates a judicial order, and (2) Practice Book § 986 (4) violates the separation of powers. We agree.
We begin by noting what this appeal does not involve. Contrary to the assertion of the defendant, it does not involve the question of whether the court orders that the defendant allegedly violated applied outside Connecticut. Nor does it involve the question of whether the trial court could have imposed civil rather than criminal sanctions for contempt of court. The defendant specifically “does not dispute a court’s authority to impose civil sanctions to obtain [compliance with] its lawful orders.” Furthermore, we do not consider, and express no opinion regarding, certain claims that the defendant purports to raise as alternate grounds to sustain the trial court’s judgment.9
*361Practice Book §§ 985 through 994 govern criminal contempt of court. Sections 985 and 986 govern the nature of the conduct involved, the purpose of the sanctions, and the persons who may be punished. Section 985 defines a criminal contempt of court as “conduct that is directed against the dignity and authority of the court,” and provides that the sanction for such conduct “is punitive in order to vindicate the authority of the court.” Section 986 governs who maybe punished, “by fine or imprisonment or both,” for criminal contempt: under subsections (1) through (3), in general terms, persons whose conduct occurs either in the presence of the court or so near thereto as to obstruct justice, and officers of the court who misbehave in the performance of their official court duties; and under subsection (4), “[a]ny person disobeying in the course of a civil or criminal proceeding any order of a judicial authority.” In contrast to subsections (1) and (2), therefore, subsection (4) governs conduct occurring outside the presence of the court.10
Practice Book §§991 through 994 govern nonsummary criminal contempt. 11 In general terms, these sections determine how such a proceeding may be prosecuted; Practice Book § 991; see footnote 4;12 who *362may hear such a proceeding; Practice Book § 992;13 the right to a jury trial in such a proceeding; Practice Book § 993;14 and the limits of the sanctions that may be imposed. Practice Book § 994.15
At issue in this case is the power of the trial court to act under § 986 (4) in a nonsummary fashion by punishing, as criminal contempt of court, conduct occurring outside of the court’s presence, by a “person disobeying in the course of a civil or criminal proceeding any order of a judicial authority.” We conclude that the court has such inherent power, and that the legislature has not abrogated it by any legislative enactment.
The inherent power of a Connecticut trial court non-summarily to punish, as criminal contempt of court, conduct occurring outside the court’s presence, such as disobedience to a judicial order, has been recognized in an unbroken line of authority from the earliest days of our judiciary to the present. These authorities have *363also consistently recognized that this inherent power is separate and distinct from the statutes regulating the exercise of the contempt power for conduct occurring in the court’s presence. See 2 Z. Swift, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Connecticut (1823) pp. 358-59 (“Though the statute only contemplates contempts in presence of the court, yet at common law contempts not in the presence of the court may be-punished in a summary manner .... When courts punish for contempts, committed in their presence, they must inflict a definite fine, or imprison for a certain time in the manner prescribed by the statute: but where they punish for contempts at common law, or not committed in their presence they may imprison till further order of the court . . . .”); Rogers Mfg. Co. v. Rogers, 38 Conn. 121, 123 (1871) (criminal contempt for violation of injunction) (“The limitation provided for punishment of contempts in the presence of courts . . . has no application to contempts by disobedience to the orders and decrees of courts of chancery.”); Tyler v. Hamersley, 44 Conn. 393, 412 (1877) (criminal contempt for disobedience to writ of mandamus) (“Contempts are offences at common law against the court as an organ of public justice. The right of punishment is inherent in all courts and is essential for their protection and existence.”); Huntington v. McMahon, 48 Conn. 174, 196 (1880) (criminal contempt for taking property by force from judicial officer who held it for condemnation) (“[T]he statute deals only with acts of contempt committed in the presence of the court, and where no process is required to bring the offender into court. It leaves all other cases of contempt to be ascertained and punished according to the course of the common law.”); Welch v. Barber, 52 Conn. 147, 156 (1884) (criminal contempt for falsely causing attorney to secure continuance) (“There are . . . acts which are in defiance of the power and dignity of the court, but which are not *364actually nor constructively in its presence. . . . These . . . are not within the statute, but are defined and punished by the common law.”); State v. Howell, 80 Conn. 668, 671, 69 A. 1057 (1908) (criminal contempt for publishing newspaper articles about trial) (“The proceeding in contempt is for an offense against the court as an organ of public justice and not for a violation of the criminal law. The power to punish such offenses is inherent in courts of record, to enable them to preserve their own dignity and to duly administer justice in the causes pending before them.”); McTigue v. New London Education Assn., 164 Conn. 348, 353, 321 A.2d 462 (1973) (criminal contempt for violation of injunction) (“In criminal contempt the sanction is punitive in order to vindicate the authority of the court.”).
These authorities, moreover, are consistent with the law of criminal contempt generally. In the context of a proceeding for criminal contempt based upon violations of an injunction, the United States Supreme Court stated: “That the power to punish for contempts is inherent in all courts, has been many times decided and may be regarded as settled law. It is essential to the administration of justice. The courts of the United States, when called into existence and vested with jurisdiction over any subject, at once became possessed of the power. . . . The ability to punish disobedience to judicial orders is regarded as essential to ensuring that the Judiciary has a means to vindicate its own authority without complete dependence on other Branches. If a party can make himself a judge of the validity of orders which have been issued, and by his own act of disobedience set them aside, then are the courts impotent, and what the Constitution now fittingly calls the judicial power of the United States would be a mere mockery.” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S.A., 481 U.S. 787, 795-96, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 95 L. Ed. *3652d 740 (1987);16 see also R. Goldfarb, The Contempt Power (1963) p. 9 (“[t]he power of courts to punish con-tempts is one which wends historically back to the early days of England and the crown”).
These authorities belie the defendant’s assertion that “[tjhere is no case, and no authority, anywhere in the United States that supports an argument that a court has inherent power to impose criminal sanctions for behavior that does not actually occur in the courtroom.” Unmistakably, our courts have such power, and Practice Book § 986 (4) reflects the exercise of that power.17
*366We likewise reject the defendant’s contention that enactments by the legislature have eroded inherent judicial authority over criminal contempts occurring outside the presence of the court. Neither General Statutes § 51-33 nor General Statutes § 51-33a; see footnotes 7 and 8; affects that inherent judicial power in any way. The origins of § 51-33 go back at least to 1821. Moore v. State, 186 Conn. 256, 260, 440 A.2d 969 (1982). We have long held that this statute governs only con-tempts of court committed in the court’s presence, and does not affect contemptuous conduct committed outside that presence. Welch v. Barber, supra; Huntington v. McMahon, supra; Rogers Mfg. Co. v. Rogers, supra; see also 2 Z. Swift, supra.
Similarly, the enactment of § 51-33a in 1971 was not intended to displace the inherent power of the court to punish out-of-court contemptuous conduct. The purpose of § 51-33a was to comply with the mandate of the United States Supreme Court in Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 91 S. Ct. 499, 27 L. Ed. 2d 532 (1971), in which the court held that due process requires, under certain extreme circumstances, that a criminal contempt be heard by a judge other than the one who was the target of the contemptuous in-court conduct. Moore v. State, supra. Section 51-33a does not affect the court’s power regarding out-of-court conduct. Like § 51-33, it leaves that power to the course of the common law, and to our Practice Book provisions.
The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings according to law.
In this opinion the other justices concurred.