In Bloom v. State of Illinois, 391 U.S. 194 (1968), the United States Supreme Court held that criminal contempt is a criminal offense, subject to all the protections afforded criminal defendants, as a matter of constitutional law. There, the Supreme Court set forth the rule that an alleged contemnor subject to a punishment of more than six months in jail is constitutionally entitled to a jury trial, but that one subject to a jail term six months or less is not. Indeed, our supreme court followed Bloom when it decided Barron. However, the Supreme Court did assert in Bloom that "criminal contempt is a crime in the ordinary sense." Bloom v. State of Illinois, supra, 391 U.S. at 201. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court noted elsewhere in its opinion that, because "serious contempts are so nearly like other serious crimes," a jury trial is constitutionally warranted only if the punishment may exceed six months in jail. Bloom v. State of Illinois, supra, 391 U.S. at 198. The Bloom Court also observed that criminal contempt has traditionally been viewed not as a crime but rather as an exercise of a court's inherent powers to enforce its orders, citing among other sources Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1890).