Legal Opinion: Barristers at loggerheads with judges over the wig

The arch-reformers of the Bar must be pulling out their hair in despair. No sooner have the judges taken the bold step of agreeing to remove their wigs in court than barristers have voted to keep theirs on.

A survey of 15,000 advocates published this week has left the leaders of the Bar in no doubt as to what its membership thinks of wigless lawyers. Two-thirds of barristers and "interested parties" polled said that they wished to retain full legal costume in High Court cases and above.

This now raises the rather unedifying spectacle of a courtroom presided over by a bare-headed judge hearing arguments advanced by barristers looking even more like players in the royal courts of Hanoverian England.

In July, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, announced that from next year, judges in civil cases will no longer wear wigs, collars and bands. Instead they will sport a continental-style gown. For criminal cases the wig is to be retained.

The decision was almost universally welcomed as a move in the direction of a much more modern-looking judiciary, helping to challenge the stereotypical view of the out-of-touch High Court judge so often characterised by Private Eye's Mr Justice Cocklecarrot.

If the judges were prepared to meet the public without their traditional headgear, surely barristers would leap at the chance of joining them in the modern world? But the Bar is having none of it, stubbornly clinging on to the apparel of 18th-century aristocratic England.

Last month a survey showed that most barristers believe that the public consider them to be pompous and out of touch. So, by casting an overwhelming vote in favour of the periwig, barristers must be aware that they are spurning a chance to divest themselves of this fusty image.

The wig vote also gives the impression of a profession not at ease with itself. This is a vote which suggests barristers are not as self-confident as they would have us believe. Perhaps the threat from the solicitor advocate, who has equal rights of audience to the barrister but is not allowed to wear a wig in court, is beginning to make a mark. Or have barristers simply grown too attached to their horse hair?

But whatever the reason, the Lord Chief Justice is now left in the awkward position of having decide what to do next. Should he simply allow barristers to come to court in wigs or should he try to persuade the Bar to face up to reality?

The current chairman of the Bar and his heir, or should that be hair, apparent have left Lord Phillips with little wriggle room.

"Our consultation", says Geoffrey Vos QC, Chairman of the Bar,

indicates a desire to maintain the status quo and for our historic traditions to continue to play a part in the civil

justice system. Respondents felt strongly that traditional dress should be maintained in the higher courts; it now remains for us to establish how best to implement these responses. We look forward to working with the profession, in close co-operation with the senior judiciary, to find a satisfactory way forward.

Tim Dutton QC, Chairman of the Bar elect, chose to bolster his members' position by highlighting the public input into the consultation:

What is particularly interesting in this consultation, is that it is those who are non-barristers or non-practising barristers, who recognise the importance Court Dress plays in our legal system and feel strongest about its retention this is an issue of importance to everyone, particularly consumers not just barristers.

But just because the public is amused and entertained by people in fancy dress, it doesn't necessarily follow that the costume is in the best interests of those who get to wear it.

r.verkaik@independent.co.uk