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Lawyers appearing at the UK’s highest court will no longer have to wear traditional dress, it was announced today.
From now on advocates in cases heard at the Supreme Court in London will be able to “dispense with any or all of the elements of traditional court dress”.
The announcement was made by the court’s president, Lord Phillips.
Supreme Court justices do not wear legal dress themselves.
A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless …
By Jeremy Phillips, on IPKat, a scholarly source for the hoariest oldest chestnut of Irish copyright law:
Past historic 3: Copyright infringement and the tale of St Columba
The subject of this essay is the story of Columba — saint, scholar and alleged copyright infringer — and the ruling against him: “To every cow its calf and to every book its copy”. Readers of this weblog will recall that its author had cause to return to the story in the course of some Irish copyright blogging towards the end of last year: you can access the follow-up by clicking “Wednesday Whimsies, or a Tale of Three Lams …” here and scrolling down till you find “More on St Columba Again”
From last Friday’s Irish Times (with added links):
Review aims to open up new digital creative space
The Copyright Review Committee is trying to take on board as many viewpoints as possible, writes Karlin Lillington.
… Several successive governments have highlighted digital businesses as an area for major growth in the economy. It’s a sector heavily wooed by IDA Ireland, and also promoted by Enterprise Ireland. But for years, this sector has been critical of Irish copyright law … However, from big multinationals such as Google on down to small indigenous start-ups and individual content creators such as musicians and artists, digital innovators think there’s plenty of room for improvement and argue that this would not only unleash greater national creativity, but would also help drive expansion in the economy. New industries would see Ireland as a good legal environment in which to do business, they say. …
The submissions reflect the interests and concerns of the whole panoply of players across many digital industries … There are submissions from the rights holders, who were concerned to protect copyright; from the intermediaries – the people like Google who are the gateways to the internet – and from the users, the SMEs and entrepreneurs and those trying to do interesting, creative things and who want to consider new business methods, new businesses, and new applications. … The aim of the committee is to look at all of those interests and try to encourage digital innovation. …
At the beginning of the current legal year, Irish judges broke with three centuries of tradition, and ceased wearing wigs in court. On 13 October last, the Minister for Justice issued a press release stating that he had signed into law two new Statutory Instruments to make the wearing of ceremonial wigs optional in the courts. The Statutory Instruments came into force the following day, 14 October, just in time for the new legal term (Irish Times, here, here, and here). The making of the SIs was duly gazetted in Iris Oifigúil on 18 October (see (2011) 83 Iris Oifigúil 1417; pdf). Hence, the Circuit Court Rules (Judges Robes) 2011 (SI No 523 of 2011) and the Rules of the Superior Courts (Robes of Bench) 2011 (SI No 524 of 2011) dispensed with the requirement that judges wear ceremonial wigs in court. However, it is only this week, a full three weeks since the Minister’s press release, that the full text of the SIs became available online. (As I have asked many times before on this blog, why does it take so long for such important legal information as cases, SIs, and Acts, to be made generally available online?). Both SIs provide that:
A Judge shall not be required to wear a wig of a ceremonial type during [Court] sittings.
This is not quite a full abolition of the wig, as it does not prevent a judge who wishes to do so from wearing one. The development has been explained as part of a move to modernise the courts, though it has also been explained as an austerity move. Either way, the question arises: with wigs gone, will a revamp of judicial gowns be far behind?
So much for the bench. As for the bar, section 49 of the Courts and Court Officers Act, 1995 removed the requirement that advocates wear a wig in court, and section 117 of the Legal Services Regulation Bill, 2011 proposes to amend section 49 to include gowns as well, as follows:
A legal practitioner when appearing in any court shall not be required to wear a wig or a robe of the kind heretofore worn or any other wig or robe of a ceremonial type.
As with judicial wigs, this would make the wearing or not of wigs and gowns an issue for individual practitioners. In any event, formal attire isn’t always necessary in court. For example, in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance v Clark [1973] Ch 323, Megarry J (pictured above) arranged a mock funeral in Iken in Suffolk to test how easy it would be to carry a coffin along an alleged right of way, and directed that neither he, nor the Registrar, nor counsel would be robed for the occasion:
Robes are convenient in normal circumstances as an indication of the functions of those engaged in the proceedings, and as enhancing the formality and dignity of a grave occasion. … But robes are not essential, … Jurisdiction is neither conferred not excluded by mere matters of attire or locality … ([1973] Ch 323, 333).
