The author, an enthusiast for court dress, can be seen wearing the barrister's stuff gown over a bar jacket on p. 207. He is depicted with the Attorney General of New South Wales in Sydney in January 2018. For someone with his interests it is his misfortune to practise law in Western Australia, a jurisdiction in which the judges of the Supreme Court wear only a single black robe without a wig and since 1 January 2010 neither judges nor counsel in either the Supreme or District Courts of Western Australia have worn wigs. This contrasts with the judges of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, who wear three sets of robes and two types of wigs depending on the occasion.
Australia, which began as a British Colony in 1788, adopted English legal dress so any history and understanding of legal dress in Australia depends on a mastery of the history of judicial and court dress in England and Wales. This explains the structure of the book with four chapters covering 181 pages entitled “Origins of English Judge's Robes”, “Elements of a Judge's Habit”, “Other Items of Court Dress” and “Court Dress in England and Wales”. These are followed by a final and fifth chapter of 107 pages entitled “Court Dress in Australia”.
The author sets out the purpose of the book in his Introduction. It is
to describe the “Habit” of a Judge which at its core includes the full ensemble of robe, mantle and hood along with the girdle, casting hood and black scarf …. Although the focus of this book is on Judges’ Robes, this book will also look at the history of the gowns and other items of forensic attire worn by the legal profession.
He adds: “This book is also, quite deliberately, heavily illustrated so as to allow the reader to be as familiar as possible with the various elements of a Judge's Habit.” Finally, he writes that there is also another reason why the book has been written, namely change:
During the past four decades in particular there has been enormous change to the ceremonial and working-day dress of Judges both in English and Australian Courts …. Having researched the history and minute detail of English Judges’ Robes over many years the writer has come to fully appreciate that the continued retention of robes and gowns by both the Bench and Bar is not due to some uninformed dogmatic adherence to old customs and practices without reason: rather it is clear that the continued use of these distinctive forms of dress, in numerous countries throughout the Commonwealth and beyond, is due to inter alia its effectiveness in promoting solemnity, uniformity and continuity in our legal system.
In the words of Windeyer J.:
The observance of old forms and customs is not simply a conservative adherence to usage. It is more, for it is a manifestation of the continuity of the law of the land. The present is visibly linked with the past, as a firm base from which the development and reform of the law can proceed in response to new social needs.
The reference to enormous change in England is to the Reforms to Working Day Dress of English Judges in 2008, which came into effect on 1 October 2008. These included a new civil gown with coloured bands to denote seniority: gold for Court of Appeal judges, red for High Court judges, blue for County Court judges and pink for Masters and Registrars. The civil robe designed by a fashion designer replaced the traditional robes worn by judges in the civil and family divisions in open court.
The most striking feature of the book is the huge number, mostly in colour, of over 250 illustrations with long captions. Half approximately relate to England and Wales and half to Australia. The quality is excellent and there are innumerable oil paintings of judges from different centuries and even decades so that the reader is forced to distinguish between the robe, mantle and hood and for instance observe that between 1613 and 1625 the mantle ceased to be fastened on the right shoulder and was fastened under the chin. With so many illustrations it is a pity that they are not numbered or listed. There is an index but its coverage is sporadic. If you wanted to look up Betty Jackson, the fashion designer responsible for the new civil robe, you would not find her though she appears in the text on p. 173 and in an illustration on p. 174. Judge Neal William Macrossan, who is on p. 234, makes it to the index but then lacks a page number. In contrast to the mediocre index there is an excellent bibliography divided into a number of sections.
The second point to note in the book is the large number of footnotes totalling over six hundred. These are in the correct position for footnotes at the foot of the pages and not at the end of chapters. It is worth noting that the book, which is published by Talbot Publishing in New Jersey, is very well produced and a pleasure to handle and read. The author's enthusiasm but also lack of discipline can be seen in the footnotes. On p. 37 in the text there is a statement that “the change in preferences from green to scarlet may have been due to the fact that the colour of the House of Lancaster was red”. In footnote 69 on the following page, there is a reference to “the Lancastrian colours of white and blue”. White and blue were the Lancastrian colours and red and white, as in the Cross of St. George, were the national colours.
In the caption to the photograph of the current Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, there is a reference to “the SS chain” yet, in footnote 22 on p. 166, there is a reference to both “the SS collar” and “a collar of Ss or esses”. It is a collar not a chain, the distinction being that collars, worn also by senior Knights of Orders of Chivalry, hang equally front and back whereas chains go round the neck and hang only to the front. Collars have to be tied with ribbons to the shoulders of the garment over which they are worn, as seen in three photographs of Lord Chief Justices on pp. 166 and 167 where the left shoulder ribbons are visible. The correct term is “collar of SS”.
Another oddity, which emerges is a reference to “mourning dress” seen on p. 177 where Justices of the Supreme Court of the UK are stated for ceremonial occasions to wear a “black damask robe embroidered with gold lace over normal or mourning dress”. This finds its way into the index where there are 10 references to mourning dress. Some of these are references to the black mourning gown worn by the Bar since the death of Charles II in 1685 in place of the earlier “noble robe” worn by barristers. A distinction has not been made between a mourning gown, which is associated with mourning, and a morning coat or morning dress, the most formal day wear not worn in the evening. The Justices of the Supreme Court wear “normal or morning dress”. A final comment on the description of dress is on the caption on p. 135 to the photograph of Sir Samuel Griffith, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland; he is stated to be wearing “buckled shoes and black tights”. I am sure that he would, as I have done for over 40 years, have worn two pairs of stockings on each leg, a thick pair probably of cotton lisle underneath and a shiny silk pair on top. Wearing tights with no fly buttons would be impractical.
The arms of Edward the Confessor Azure a Cross Patonce between Five Martlets Or are described on p. 44 as Five Doves or Martins Surrounding a Patonce Cross. Martlets are a legless heraldic bird possibly based on the house martin and the arms attributed posthumously to Edward the Confessor, who lived in a pre-heraldic era, may have been based on his coinage which included a cross between four birds resembling doves. The manuscript of c.1460 which is being described and which forms a handsome full page illustration is of the Court of Chivalry now in the Inner Temple Library. The birds depicted are martlets. The only other heraldic point, which is perhaps a typing mistake, is a reference in footnote 54 on p. 33 to 10 heraldic statutes, which should be statues.
The author has catalogued successfully the gradual development of judicial and other legal dress from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Details are given of the green robes worn in the summer by judges until the early to mid-sixteenth century with violet robes for winter, then after 1635 black and violet robes throughout the year and, by the nineteenth century, black robes with a miniver (white stoat fur) lining in winter and violet in summer with a taffeta lining and facings. Scarlet appeared by the fifteenth century for special occasions. It is easy to forget that until the opening of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in 1882, the three common law courts – the King's or Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas and the Exchequer – all sat in Westminster Hall. The Court of Chancery was also in Westminster Hall and the courts of King's Bench and Chancery, which were on raised platforms against the south end of the Hall, were not fully partitioned until 1760. An illustration from the Microcosm of London shows the Court of Chancery in Lincoln's Inn Hall in 1808. The judges still proceed to Westminster Hall to mark the start of the legal year after a service in Westminster Abbey and the caption on p. 74 describing them as entering “Westminster Parliament through the St. Stephen's entrance” on 1 October 2009 should describe them as entering Westminster Hall. Parliament sits in the Palace of Westminster but the building is not called Westminster Parliament.
The one area where Mr. Yazdani has held back with illustrations is with the new civil robes. Only red and blue bands are illustrated on pp. 174 and 175. To see all four you would have to go to pp. 74 and 75 of the second (2014) edition of my 87-page and much more modest Legal Habits, A Brief Sartorial History of Wig, Robe and Gown, published by Ede and Ravenscroft. There the robes which have a dull and continental European appearance are illustrated in all their uninspiring drabness.
Towards the end of his Introduction the author writes: “It is the writer's hope that this book shall keep for posterity, an illustrative account of the rich and long-lasting legacy of court dress …. There is a real risk that if such customs and traditions are not adequately recorded while still in use their existence and usage will be eventually forgotten by future generations.”
Quoting James Derriman, author of Pageantry of the Law (1955), he writes: “Pageantry without significance is mere superstition and rigmarole. If this book helps to make the significance and history of legal pageantry in this country more widely known, its existence will be justified.”
The existence of this book is justified and the author has achieved what he set out to do. The magnificent illustrations and clear text compel the reader to become engrossed in and enjoy the subject.
