Here’s When British Lawyers Still Put on Those Silly, Old-Timey Wigs

I recently watched the excellent British drama Broadchurch. Without spoiling any of it, it revolves around a pretty dark turn of events, mainly a child going from the top of a cliff to the bottom using zero stairs. Mix in a bit of adults and children possibly doing things that aren’t playing catch, and it’s not exactly a light watch. 

Season Two is primarily focused on the court case looking to sort out all that nastiness from Season One. But as the camera cut to the lawyers, or barristers as the British call them, I saw something I thought had gone the way of the petticoat: those floppy, pale, patently ridiculous old-school wigs that make said barristers look less like arbiters of the law and more like a sheep in a middle school play. The ones that make them look like an upside-down mall Santa. The ones that look like they’re about to mop your floor via the art of breakdancing. And so on and so forth.

Again, I stress that this isn’t a little silly civil case, but a child murder. They’re asking people if they killed a kid, while a little white law-mullet flops to and fro. 

But let’s back up. What do these wigs even have to do with the law in the first place? 

Apparently, next to nothing. They were just in fashion around 1660, with lawyers wearing them along with anyone else in England who was attempting to look their best. Then, as the rest of the country started to realize that they looked absolutely ludicrous, lawyers apparently continued to think, “No, these kind of slay.” 

The only jobs that still went full wig as we entered the 1800s were coachmen, bishops and the the legal profession. Of these, even the bishops stopped donning them in the 1830s. Think about what a bishop usually wears, and now think about what it would take for them to look at an accessory and go, “Well, this looks a little goofy, doesn’t it?”

We are now in the year 2024, which means British lawyers have had a full 200 years in which, statistically, they must have passed at least one mirror. Yet, the wigs remain. The rules have loosened — barristers are no longer required to wear wigs for all cases, only criminal ones — but that’s kinda worse: They only have to look like a full-on idiot if the subject matter is especially serious. 

How are court transcripts of the United Kingdom not filled with begging for the barristers to, “Please, take that bloody thing off”? You’re staring down serial killers looking like a carelessly picked dandelion?

Judges and barristers maintain that the wigs bring a sense of solemnity to the courtroom. To which I solemnly say, look at this shit: