415 U.S. 423 (1974)
This case concerns the interpretation of 28 U. S. C. § 1450, which provides in pertinent part: “Whenever any action is removed from a State court to a district court of the United States . . . [a]ll injunctions, orders, and other proceedings had in such action prior to its removal shall remain in full force and effect until dissolved or modified by the district court.” The District Court held respondent Union in criminal contempt for violating a temporary restraining order issued by the California Superior Court on May 18, 1970, prior to the removal of the case from the Superior Court to the District Court. The Court of Appeals reversed, one judge dissenting, on the ground that the temporary restraining order had expired long before November 30, 1970, the date of the alleged contempt. 472 F. 2d 764 (CA9 1973). The court reasoned that under both § 527 of the California Code of Civil Procedure and Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 65 (b), the temporary restraining order must have expired no later than June 7, 1970, 20 days after its issuance. The court rejected petitioners’ contention that the life of the order was indefinitely prolonged by § 1450 “until dissolved or modified by the district court,” holding that the purpose of that statute “is to prevent a break in the force of an injunction or a restraining order that could otherwise occur when jurisdiction is being shifted,” 472 F. 2d, at 767, not to “create a special breed of temporary restraining orders that survive beyond the life span imposed by the state law from which they spring and beyond the life that the district court could have granted them had the orders initiated from the federal court.” Id., at 766.
As this understanding of the statute was in conflict with decisions of two other Circuits interpreting § 1450 to preclude the automatic termination of state court temporary restraining orders, we granted certiorari. 414 U. S. 816 (1973). Finding ourselves in substantial agreement with the analysis of the Ninth Circuit in the present case, we affirm.
I
On May 15, 1970, petitioners Granny Goose Foods, Inc., and Sunshine Biscuits, Inc., filed a complaint in the Superior Court of California for the county of Alameda alleging that respondent, a local Teamsters Union, and its officers and agents, were engaging in strike activity in breach of national and local collective-bargaining agreements recently negotiated by multiunion-multiemployer bargaining teams. Although the exact nature of the underlying labor dispute is unclear, its basic contours are as follows: The Union was unwilling to comply with certain changes introduced in the new contracts; it believed it was not legally bound by the new agreements because it had not been a part of the multiunion bargaining units that negotiated the contracts; and it wanted to negotiate separate contracts with petitioner employers.
The same day the complaint was filed, the Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining all existing strike activity and ordering the defendants to show cause on May 26, 1970, why a preliminary injunction should not issue during the pendency of the suit. An amended complaint adding petitioner Standard Brands, Inc., was filed on May 18, and a modified temporary restraining order was issued that same day adding a prohibition against strike activities directed toward that employer.
On May 19, 1970, after having been served with the May 15 restraining order but before the scheduled hearing on the order to show cause, the Union and the individual defendants removed the proceeding to the District Court on the ground that the action arose under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185. On May 20, 1970, an amended removal petition was filed to take into account the modified temporary restraining order of May 18.
Simultaneously with the filing of the removal petition, the defendants filed a motion in the District Court to dissolve the temporary restraining order. The sole ground alleged in support of the motion was that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to maintain the restraining order under this Court’s decision in Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U. S. 195 (1962), where the Court held that notwithstanding § 301’s grant of jurisdiction to federal courts over suits between employers and unions for breach of collective-bargaining agreements, § 4 of the Norris-La Guardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U. S. C. § 104, barred federal courts from issuing an injunction against a strike allegedly in violation of a collective-bargaining agreement containing a no-strike clause.
The employers then filed a motion to remand the case to the Superior Court, alleging that the defendants had waived their right to removal by submitting to the jurisdiction of the state court. The Union’s motion to dissolve and the employers’ motion to remand came on for a hearing on May 27, 1970. The motion to remand was denied from the bench. With respect to the motion to dissolve, the employers brought to the attention of the District Court our grant of certiorari in Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, 396 U. S. 1000 (1970), which was interpreted as an indication that the Court would re-examine its holding in Sinclair. As Boys Markets had been argued here in April 1970, the District Court refrained from taking any action on the motion to dissolve until it received further guidance from this Court. On June 1, 1970, we handed down our decision in Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235, overruling Sinclair and holding that a district court could enjoin a strike in breach of a no-strike clause in a collective-bargaining agreement and order arbitration under the agreement. Three days later, on June 4, 1970, the District Court entered a brief order denying the motion to dissolve the state court temporary restraining order, citing Boys Markets.
Evidently picketing and strike activity stopped and the labor dispute remained dormant after June 4. The flame was rekindled, however, when on November 9, 1970, the Union sent the employers telegrams requesting bargaining to arrive at a collective-bargaining agreement and expressing the Union’s continued belief that it was not bound by the national and local agreements negotiated by the multiunion-multiemployer groups. The employers answered that there was no need to bargain because, in their view, the Union was bound by the national and local agreements. The conflict remained unresolved, and on November 30, 1970, the Union commenced its strike activity once again.
The next day the employers moved the District Court to hold the Union, its agents, and officers in contempt of the modified temporary restraining order issued by the Superior Court on May 18. A hearing was held on the motion the following day. The Union’s argument that the temporary restraining order had long since expired was rejected by the District Court on two grounds. First, the court concluded that its earlier action denying the motion to dissolve the temporary restraining order gave the order continuing force and effect. Second, the court found that § 1450 itself served to continue the restraining order in effect until affirmatively dissolved or modified by the court. Concluding after the hearing that the Union had willfully violated the restraining order, the District Court held it in criminal contempt and imposed a fine of $200,000.
II
Leaving aside for the moment the question whether the order denying the motion to dissolve the temporary restraining order was effectively the grant of a preliminary injunction, it is clear that whether California law or Rule 65 (b) is controlling, the temporary restraining order issued by the Superior Court expired long before the date of the alleged contempt. Section 527 of the California Code of Civil Procedure, under which the order was issued, provides that temporary restraining orders must be returnable no later than 15 days from the date of the order, 20 days if good cause is shown, and unless the party obtaining the order then proceeds to submit its case for a preliminary injunction, the temporary restraining order must be dissolved. Similarly, under Rule 65 (b), temporary restraining orders must expire by their own terms within 10 days after entry, 20 days if good cause is shown.
Petitioners argue, however, that notwithstanding the time limitations of state law, § 1450 keeps all state court injunctions, including ex parte temporary restraining orders, in full force and effect after removal until affirmatively dissolved or modified by the district court. To the extent this reading of § 1450 is inconsistent with the time limitations of Rule 65 (b), petitioners contend the statute must control.
In our view, however, § 1450 can and should be interpreted in a manner which fully serves its underlying purposes, yet at the same time places it in harmony with the important congressional policies reflected in the time limitations in Rule 65 (b).
At the outset, we can find no basis for petitioners' argument that § 1450 was intended to turn ex parte state court temporary restraining orders of limited duration into federal court injunctions of unlimited duration. Section 1450 was simply designed to deal with the unique problem of a shift in jurisdiction in the middle of a case which arises whenever cases are removed from state to federal court. In this respect two basic purposes are served. Judicial economy is promoted by providing that proceedings had in state court shall have force and effect in federal court, so that pleadings filed in state court, for example, need not be duplicated in federal court. In addition, the statute ensures that interlocutory orders entered by the state court to protect various rights of the parties will not lapse upon removal. Thus attachments, sequestrations, bonds, undertakings, securities, injunctions, and other orders obtained in state court all remain effective after the case is removed to federal court.
But while Congress clearly intended to preserve the effectiveness of state court orders after removal, there is no basis for believing that § 1450 was designed to give injunctions or other orders greater effect after removal to federal court than they would have had if the case had remained in state court. After removal, the federal court “takes the case up where the State court left it off.” Duncan v. Gegan, 101 U. S. 810, 812 (1880). The “full force and effect” provided state court orders after removal of the case to federal court was not intended to be more than the force and effect the orders would have had in state court.
More importantly, once a case has been removed to federal court, it is settled that federal rather than state law governs the future course of proceedings, notwithstanding state court orders issued prior to removal. Section 1450 implies as much by recognizing the district court's authority to dissolve or modify injunctions, orders, and all other proceedings had in state court prior to removal. This Court resolved this issue long ago in Ex parte Fisk, 113 U. S. 713 (1885). There it was argued that an order to take the deposition of a witness issued by the state court prior to removal was binding in federal court and could not be reconsidered by the federal court, notwithstanding its inconsistency with certain federal statutes governing procedure in federal courts. The Court rejected this contention, and said that the predecessor of § 1450
“declares orders of the State court, in a case afterwards removed, to be in force until dissolved or modified by the Circuit Court. This fully recognizes the power of the latter court over such orders. And it was not intended to enact that an order made in the State court, which affected or might affect the mode of trial yet to be had, could change or modify the express directions of an act of Congress on that subject.
“The petitioner having removed his case into the Circuit Court has a right to have its further progress governed by the law of the latter court, and not by that of the court from which it was removed; and if one of the advantages of this removal was an escape from this examination, he has a right to that benefit if his case was rightfully removed.”
Id., at 725-726.
See also King v. Worthington, 104 U. S. 44 (1881); Freeman v. Bee Machine Co., 319 U. S. 448 (1943).
By the same token, respondent Union had a right to the protections of the time limitation in Rule 65 (b) once the case was removed to the District Court. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, like other provisions of federal law, govern the mode of proceedings in federal court after removal. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 81 (c). In addition, we may note that although the durational limitations imposed on ex parte restraining orders are now codified in a federal rule, they had their origin in § 17 of the Clayton Act of 1914, 38 Stat. 737. As the House Report recommending its enactment emphasized, the durational and other limitations imposed on temporary restraining orders were thought necessary to cure a serious problem of “ill-considered injunctions without notice.” The stringent restrictions imposed by § 17, and now by Rule 65, on the availability of ex parte temporary restraining orders reflect the fact that our entire jurisprudence runs counter to the notion of court action taken before reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard has been granted both sides of a dispute. Ex parte temporary restraining orders are no doubt necessary in certain circumstances, cf. Carroll v. President and Comm’rs of Princess Anne, 393 U. S. 175, 180 (1968), but under federal law they should be restricted to serving their underlying purpose of preserving the status quo and preventing irreparable harm just so long as is necessary to hold a hearing, and no longer.
We can find no indication that Congress intended § 1450 as an exception to its broader, longstanding policy of restricting the duration of ex parte restraining orders. The underlying purpose of § 1450 — ensuring that no lapse in a state court temporary restraining order will occur simply by removing the case to federal court — and the policies reflected in Rule 65 (b) can easily be accommodated by applying the following rule: An ex parte temporary restraining order issued by a state court prior to removal remains in force after removal no longer than it would have remained in effect under state law, but in no event does the order remain in force longer than the time limitations imposed by Rule 65 (b), measured from the date of removal.
Applying our holding to the present case is simple. The temporary restraining order was issued by the Superior Court on May 18, 1970, and would have remained in effect in the state court no longer than 15 days, or until June 2. The case was removed to federal court on May 20, 1970. The temporary restraining order therefore expired on May 30, 1970, applying the 10-day limitation of Rule 65 (b) from the date of removal. Accordingly, no order was in effect on November 30, 1970, and the Union violated no order when it resumed its strike at that time.
III
We now turn to petitioners’ argument that, apart from the operation of § 1450, the District Court’s denial of the Union’s motion to dissolve the temporary restraining order effectively converted the order into a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument out of hand, stating that “[t]he Union’s unsuccessful effort to dissolve the order before it died a natural death did not convert the temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction or estop it from relying on the death certificate.” 472 F. 2d, at 767. We reach essentially the same conclusion.
As indicated earlier, once a case has been removed to federal court, its course is to be governed by federal law, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 65 (b) establishes a procedure whereby the party against whom a temporary restraining order has issued can move to dissolve or modify the injunction, upon short notice to the party who obtained the order. Situations may arise where the parties, at the time of the hearing on the motion to dissolve the restraining order, find themselves in a position to present their evidence and legal arguments for or against a preliminary injunction. In such circumstances, of course, the court can proceed with the hearing as if it were a hearing on an application for a preliminary injunction. At such hearing, as in any other hearing in which a preliminary injunction is sought, the party seeking the injunction would bear the burden of demonstrating the various factors justifying preliminary injunctive relief, such as the likelihood of irreparable injury to it if an injunction is denied and its likelihood of success on the merits.
On the other hand, situations might arise where the parties are not prepared and do not intend at the hearing on the motion to dissolve or modify the temporary restraining order to present their cases for or against a preliminary injunction. In such circumstances, the appropriate procedure would be for the district court to deal with the issues raised in the motion to dissolve or modify the restraining order, but to postpone for a later hearing, still within the time limitations of Rule 65 (b), the application for a preliminary injunction. See generally C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure: Civil § 2954, p. 523 (1973 ed.).
In the present case we think it plain that the hearing on the Union's motion to dissolve the restraining order cannot be considered to be a hearing on a preliminary-injunction, and that the District Court’s order denying the motion to dissolve cannot reasonably be construed as the grant of a preliminary injunction. There is no indication in the record that either party or the District Court itself treated the May 27 hearing as a hearing on an application for a preliminary injunction. The employers made no attempt at that time to present their case for a preliminary injunction. Likewise, the Union made no attempt at that time to present its defense that it was not bound by the new national and local agreements because it had made a timely withdrawal from the multiunion bargaining unit negotiating said contracts. See n. 3, supra. The court itself did not indicate that it was undertaking a hearing on a preliminary injunction. As far as we can tell, it never addressed itself at the hearing to the various equitable factors involved in considering a preliminary injunction, but only considered the employers' argument that the case should be remanded to the state court because the right to remove had been waived by the Union's appearing in the state proceeding and the Union’s argument that the temporary restraining order should be dissolved for want of jurisdiction under the Sinclair holding.
We cannot accept petitioners’ argument that the controlling factor is that the Union had the opportunity to be heard on the merits of the preliminary injunction when it moved in the District Court to dissolve the temporary restraining order. Rule 65 (b) does not place upon the party against whom a temporary restraining order has issued the burden of coming forward and presenting its case against a preliminary injunction. To the contrary, the Rule provides that “[i]n case a temporary restraining order is granted without notice, the motion for a preliminary injunction shall be set down for hearing at the earliest possible time . . . and when the motion comes on for hearing the party who obtained the temporary restraining order shall proceed with the application for a preliminary injunction and, if he does not do so, the court shall dissolve the temporary restraining order.” The burden was on the employers to show that they were entitled to a preliminary injunction, not on the Union to show that they were not.
Even were we to assume that the District Court had intended by its June 4 order to grant a preliminary injunction, its intention was not manifested in an appropriate form. Where a hearing on a preliminary injunction has been held after issuance of a temporary restraining order, and where the District Court decides to grant the preliminary injunction, the appropriate procedure is not simply to continue in effect the temporary restraining order, but rather to issue a preliminary injunction, accompanied by the necessary findings of fact and conclusions of law. As stated by the Second Circuit:
“The fact that notice is given and a hearing held cannot serve to extend indefinitely beyond the period limited by [Rule 65 (b)] the time during which a temporary restraining order remains effective. The [Rule] contemplates that notice and hearing shall result in an appropriate adjudication, i. e., the issuance or denial of a preliminary injunction, not in extension of the temporary stay.”
Pan American World Airways v. Flight Engineers’ Assn., 306 F. 2d 840, 842 (1962) (footnotes omitted).
See also Sims v. Greene, 160 F. 2d 512 (CA3 1947).
As the fine imposed in this case exemplifies, serious penalties can befall those who are found to be in contempt of court injunctions. Accordingly, one basic principle built into Rule 65 is that those against whom an injunction is issued should receive fair and precisely drawn notice of what the injunction actually prohibits.
“The judicial contempt power is a potent weapon. When it is founded upon a decree too vague to be understood, it can be a deadly one. Congress responded to that danger by requiring that a federal court frame its orders so that those who must obey them will know what the court intends to require and what it means to forbid. . . . The most fundamental postulates of our legal order forbid the imposition of a penalty for disobeying a command that defies comprehension.”
International Longshoremen’s Assn. v. Philadelphia Marine Trade Assn., 389 U. S. 64, 76 (1967).
It would be inconsistent with this basic principle to countenance procedures whereby parties against whom an injunction is directed are left to guess about its intended duration. Rule 65 (b) provides that temporary restraining orders expire by their own terms within 10 days of their issuance. Where a court intends to supplant such an order with a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration pending a final decision on the merits or further order of the court, it should issue an order clearly saying so. And where it has not done so, a party against whom a temporary restraining order has issued may reasonably assume that the order has expired within the time limits imposed by Rule 65 (b). Here, since the only orders entered were a temporary restraining order of limited duration and an order denying a motion to dissolve the temporary order, the Union had no reason to believe that a preliminary injunction of unlimited duration had been issued.
Since neither § 1450 nor the District Court's denial of the Union’s motion to dissolve the temporary restraining order effectively converted that order into a preliminary injunction, no order was in effect on November 30, 1970, over six months after the temporary restraining order was issued. There being no order to violate, the District Court erred in holding the Union in contempt, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals reversing the District Court’s adjudication of contempt must be
Affirmed.
I agree with the Court that the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in this case should be affirmed, since there was no injunctive order in effect at the time that respondent’s allegedly contemptuous conduct occurred. But I do not join that portion of the Court’s opinion which lays down a “rule” for all cases involving 28 U. S. C. § 1450,1 the statute which all parties agree is controlling in the case before us. In my view, the announcement of this “rule” is neither necessary to the decision of this case nor consistent with the provisions of the statute itself.
The Court persuasively demonstrates in its opinion that the temporary restraining order issued by the California Superior Court had expired by its own terms long before the alleged contempt occurred. And I see nothing in the language or legislative history of 28 U. S. C. § 1450, providing that “[a]ll injunctions, orders, and other proceedings had in such action prior to its removal shall remain in full force and effect until dissolved or modified by the district court,” which would indefinitely extend the Superior Court’s restraining order beyond the time of its normal expiration under state law. Since the temporary restraining order, had the case remained in state court, concededly would have expired in early June, respondent’s actions in November and December could not have constituted a contempt of that order.
The Court also persuasively demonstrates that none of the proceedings occurring after removal of the case to the United States District Court had the effect of converting the subsisting state court temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction of indefinite duration. Those proceedings addressed markedly different issues and certainly did not give the state court order a new, independent federal existence.
Having said this much, the Court has disposed of the case before it. The opinion then goes on, however, to devise a “rule” that
“[a]n ex parte temporary restraining order issued by a state court prior to removal remains in force after removal no longer than it would have remained in effect under state law, but in no event does the order remain in force longer than the time limitations imposed by Rule 65 (b), measured from the date of removal.”
Ante, at 439-440. (Footnote omitted.)
But the determination that mere removal of a case to a federal district court does not extend the duration of a previously issued state court order past its original termination date makes quite unnecessary to this case any further discussion about time limitations contained in Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 65 (b). More importantly, the second clause of the “rule” devised by the Court seems quite contrary to the specific language of 28 U. S. C. § 1450.
The Court apparently bases this latter clause of the “rule" upon the observation that “respondent Union had a right to the protections of the time limitation in Rule 65 (b) once the case was removed to the District Court.” While this premise probably has a good deal to recommend it as a matter of practicality or of common sense, the language of the statute gives no hint that rules of practice governing issuance of federal injunctions in the first instance were automatically to be incorporated in applying its terms. The statute says that the state court's temporary restraining order “shall remain in full force and effect until dissolved or modified by the district court.” This Court’s “rule,” however, says that it shall not remain in full force and effect, even though not dissolved or modified by the District Court, if it would have a life beyond the time limitations imposed by Rule 65 (b).
I think it likely that the interest in limiting the duration of temporary restraining orders which is exemplified in Rule 65 (b) can be fully protected in cases removed to the district court by an application to modify or dissolve a state court restraining order which is incompatible with those terms.2 Such a procedure would be quite consistent with § 1450, which specifically contemplates dissolution or modification by the district court upon an appropriate showing, in a way that the “rule” devised by the Court in this case is not. It is unlikely that many orders issued under rules of state procedure, primarily designed, after all, to provide suitable procedures for state courts rather than to frustrate federal procedural rules in removed actions, would by their terms remain in effect for a period of time far longer than that contemplated by the comparable Federal Rule of Civil Procedure. But in the rare case where such a condition obtains, it is surely not asking too much of a litigant in a removed case to comply with § 1450 and affirmatively move for appropriate modification of the state order.
Therefore, although I cannot subscribe to the rule which the Court fashions to govern cases of this type, I concur in its conclusion that respondent’s activity in November and December 1970 did not violate any injunctive order which was in force at that time.3