The fashionistas so far have not been wowed.

“If humanizing the judicial profession was the aim of this makeover, it is interesting that Betty Jackson decided that the outfit best suited for this would be one that looks like something an alien android with menacing religious undertones would wear when waging war with Doctor Who,” sniffed the Guardian’s deputy fashion editor, Hadley Freeman.

The Daily Mail juxtaposed a photo of a bare-headed Lord Phillips in the new robe next to a picture of baldish actor Patrick Stewart in his Star Trek garb.

Lord Phillips, who says he is seeking to rid the public of any notion that judges are old-fashioned and out-of-touch, has admitted that not all his fellow jurists like the new outfit that much. But most do, he asserts, and he assumes the rest will get used to it.

Long ago, not everyone thought the heavy, hot, itchy head gear should be a fixture. “Who would have supposed that this grotesque ornament,” former Lord Chancellor John Campbell wrote in 1845, “fit only for an African Chief, would be considered indispensably necessary for the administration of justice in the middle of the 19th century?” The big question now is whether lawyers practicing in the civil courts can be persuaded to go along with the judges and also give the heave-ho to their wigs, which in survey after survey attorneys have indicated they cherish as much as truth itself.

“Of all the recent consultations which have gone out within the legal profession, this one has had the highest response. So it shows how important this is to lawyers,” said Tan Ikram, president of the London Criminal Court Solicitors .

... contd.