There are more important issues about the future of the legal system than whether lawyers and judges should continue to wear wigs and gowns. But the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, issued a consultation paper at the beginning of the month inviting us all to express our views. The legal bigwigs should be told by as many people as possible that fancy dress for lawyers is a nonsense that should have been mothballed long ago.

The Lord Chancellor notes that the last time these issues were the subject of public consultation in August 1992, a clear majority of those responding were in favour of retaining traditional working clothes for court. He points out that society has moved on, and so a fresh view needs to be taken. The consultation period ends on August 14.

There is no positive case for retaining legal costume. As the consultation paper observes, tradition alone is no justification since “our courts are not a tourist attraction”. The suggestion that the wearing of wigs and gowns symbolises the authority of office holders, instills respect for the law, and emphasises the impersonal and disinterested approach of the judge is impossible to sustain.

We are mature enough to understand that legal authority depends on the quality of the justice on offer, not on whether the judge and the lawyers have some horse hair on their head and a piece of cloth on their back. Indeed, it would be a sad reflection on the quality of the legal profession if its ability to command respect really did depend on its clothing.

Many courts of law perform their functions very satisfactorily without imposing a dress code. Neither the magistrates’ courts nor employment tribunals require judges and lawyers to dress up for the occasion. The law lords, sitting in the highest court of the land, wear ordinary business suits. Without any noticeable effect on the quality of the product, judges of the High Court frequently make orders unrobed, indeed occasionally undressed (vice-chancellor Shadwell is said to have granted an injunction during the 1840s while bathing in the Thames).

Those judges and lawyers who argue that the wig and gown provide a welcome measure of anonymity which protects them from the antipathy of defendants and witnesses who may meet them out of court have no right to impose their lack of self-confidence on the rest of us. Anyone who insists on maintaining a disguise is free to wear fake spectacles, a false nose and an imitation moustache during court proceedings.

It is not simply that legal dress has no justification. It is positively damaging to the health of the legal system. The legal profession cannot convince its customers that it understands contemporary concerns and can provide a service for today’s community when it looks as if it is still living in the 18th century.

Protective legal headgear contributes to legal pomposity and lay suspicion. What Anthony Trollope condemned as “the paraphernalia of the horsehair wigs” encourages the erroneous belief, in lawyers and non-lawyers alike, that the law is a foreign language that can be understood only by experts.

The insistence of the legal profession on dressing up also increases the sense of unease felt by witnesses and other lay people in court.

The consultation paper contains pictures of various options for court wear, though no mention of the idea adopted by the Idaho Supreme Court in 1994. Judges there were allowed to pick robes in any colour and in any fabric “so long as the choices fit the decorum of a courtroom” (so no tangerine leathers, then). Justice Linda Trout, who suggested the change, explained that she “was tired of black”.

Increasing the range of colours from which we can select our working clothes would not placate the ever-increasing numbers of judges and lawyers who are eager permanently to remove their wigs and gowns.

Some of us have experienced the true absurdity of appearing, dressed in national legal costume, in the European Court of Justice and attempting to understand the proceedings in a translation through headphones balanced on a barrister’s wig.

Many of us are concerned about the adverse impact that court dress has on the ability of the legal system to meet the needs of its customers. All of us are irritated by spending our working life scratching a head made itchy by the hair of a long dead horse.

We are hoping that this autumn Lord Irvine will lead the march away from the robing robes to a safe distance where liberated lawyers can burn the sartorial symbols of a bygone legal age. Legal workers of the world unite. We have nothing to lose but our manes.

The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers in the Temple, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

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