Mysteries and Meaning of Legal. Dress

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 16

Mysteries and Meaning of Legal. Dress

' Year after year the pageant of English law moves through the Abbey and across to the Palace of Westminster. Black and gold, : earlet and white, and purple blend together in a procession which is a living epitome of the continuous tradition of our' law. Francis Bacon put on just such a robe of black and gold as Lord Sankey, the Lord High Chancellor, Keeper, of the King's Conscience, Keeper of the Great Seal, and Speaker of the House of Lords, wears as he leads the way. Next comes the Master of the Rolls very similarly robed, for his title was originally attached to a sort of assistant Chancery JudgesMp. Since the law reforms of the 'seventies it has belonged to the President of the Court of Appeal. The Appeal Judges, including the President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division, who is a member of the Court, wear the same black and gold as the Master of the Eolls, for the Court of Appeal also had its beginning in Chancery jurisdiction, says the "Manchester Guardian." Georgeous after the sober splendour of the Superior Judges come the Justices of the High Court in scarlet and ermine. As the ceremonial dress of the Common Law Judges, this costume goes back farther than we can trace. In illuminations of fifteenth-century manuscripts the robes shown are essentially the same as those worn to-day. Their origin may be ecclesiastical or scholastic. No one knows. In the earliest times individual taste probably had its variations, but by an elaborate order drawn up in the time of Lord Chief Justice Bramston —who came to grief over King Charles's Ship Money venture—the dress of the Judges on all occasions was minutely regulated and since then has hardly changed. Thus, but for his long Stuart hair, Mr. Justice Powell, standing on his monument in Gloucester Cathedral, might step down and. join his successors of to-day unnoticed. The Lord Chief Justice is distinguished by his great golden collar entwined with the letters "S.S." As a badge of nobility this collar goes back no one knows how far. According, to Dugdale, it commemorates Sain.t Simplicius, who was martyred under Diocletian. In Tudor times it became the special mark of the Chief Justices. Thus, when the great Sir Edward Coke was dismissed

from the office he. refused to part with his "S.S." collar in order that his posterity "might one day know they had a Chief Justice to their ancestor." By contrast, the purple of the County Court Judges goes back less than twenty years —an addition to the dignity of our youngest Courts. On the other hand, the black silk gown, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes of the King's Counsel are, in fact, the Court mourning assumed by the profession for the funeral of Queen Mary 11. • . . Strangely enough, the wig itself, which is the characteristic mark of the English lawyer, has no symbolic significance. It is simply a frozen fashion which Lord Chancellor Campbell ridiculed as a "grotesque ornament fit only for a West African chief." However, the little hollow which the observant will notice in the crown of the wig has an older tradition than the wig itself. Till the King's Counsel came to be the leaders of the Bar the Serjeants held the foremost legal rank, and only they could become Judges. From the earliest origins of our law the badge of the serjeant was a black, close-fitting cap or '' coif.'' When wigs came into fashion it was found hard to wear the "coif" on top of it, and as wigs grew bigger tlie "coif" grew smaller, till at last it shrank to a little black patch on the crown. No serjeant has been created in England since 1870, and Lord Lindley, th e .last of the old order,.died in 1920, but the Judges' wigs still have the hollow for the little vanished cap. Oh working days the traditional magnificence is not displayed. Ttfe great full-bottomed wig has for over a century been replaced for ordinary purposes by the small Court wig. The Appeal, the Chancery, and the Divorce Judges sit in plain black gowns. The King's Bench Judges, however, thanks to the regulations of Chief Justice Bramston, have more variety, changing the colour and trimmings of their robes according to the day, the occasion, and the season of the year. What is the good of it all? That raises the old quarrel of utilitarianism. But, m brief, ceremony is to the State what good manners are to the individual. In the legal world it testifies that the scales of justice do not stand on a counter, that our Judges are not dealing in a commodity, but preserving an inheritance and, if an inheritance, a trust for posterity.