While both positions have merit, I would argue that the choice of clothes (or the lack thereof) reveals a great deal about a person. No less an avatar of modern culture than Homer Simpson has remarked that “[t]he only guys who wear Hawaiian shirts are gay guys and big fat party animals.”  However, I’m not talking about style, a subject quite beyond my expertise, but rather, about the more fundamental concept of respect for others. I occasionally visit the 22^nd Judicial District Court for Washington and St. Tammany Parishes, and never cease to be amazed at the way many people dress for court appearances. On August 10, 2008, Lafourche Parish, Louisiana enacted into law a ban on the public display of undergarments. The ordinance also bans revealing bra straps, partial nudity and clothing that is "not becoming" to one's sex, subjective language that may indeed result in a successful constitutional challenge of the ordinance. Whether or not this ordinance meets constitutional muster, the fact that an elected body felt it necessary to take this action is indicative of society’s failure to police itself by the collective exercise of common sense. Perhaps Voltaire was right when he said that “[c]ommon sense is not so common.”

 

The wearing of low-slung pants that reveal the undergarment of choice is thought to have its origin in the removal of belts from citizens that have been incarcerated, lest they use them to do harm to themselves or their cellmates. Among the leaner members of the population, this causes the pants to sag, although, at its outset, I would daresay that this was not a goal in itself. Cue the media’s relentless fascination with the “gangsta” life, and this rapidly became a sign of some sort of right-of-passage into manhood, albeit manhood largely spent lifting weights, having teardrops tattooed at the corner of one’s eye, and fending off homosexual rape in the prison shower. Go figure what impresses the kids.

 

As the inner city embraced this fashion statement, it quickly spread to suburbia. With the unspoiled egalitarianism of youth, our kids wondered why they, too, couldn’t dress like a criminal element that had been deprived of their belts to limit their potential for mayhem. Now for the truly bizarre leap to the suburban courthouse.

 

It would seem likely that the goal of most defendants in criminal justice proceedings would be acquittal, whether justified or not. Even the guilty desire to be set free. Logic dictates that defendants would want to impress the court, whether with their story, their demeanor, their sincerity, or even their appearance.  Why then, is it necessary for bailiffs to constantly be required to admonish young gentlemen to pull up their pants and tuck their shirts in? Why do young ladies appear in outfits apparently confected to give maximum exposure to their tattoos, piercings, body parts and undergarments? While the court is charged with impartiality, surely there cannot exist a belief that one’s odds are improved by dressing the part of the recently incarcerated. One may as well appear in an orange jumpsuit and count on a strong sense of irony in the presiding judge. I recall when, some years ago, the Orleans Parish Department of Corrections apparently made a bargain purchase of Army-surplus camouflage jumpsuits and began using them to outfit new arrivals. Of course, the incongruity of assisting potential escapees in blending in with their surroundings was eventually realized, and the more prosaic (and more expensive, alas) orange color scheme was reinstituted.

 

I realize that it is unreasonable and unfair to expect all defendants to dress in coats and ties or dresses. In New Orleans, in fact, recent events indicate that skirts are apparently not permissible attire for male defendants, with possible exceptions during the Southern Decadence Festival. However, is it too much to expect that clean clothes be worn, and worn in a way that evidences some respect for the institution, not to mention concern for how one will be perceived? I’m reminded of having to counsel an employee who arrived for work in a tee-shirt bearing an obscene slogan. How does one explain the inappropriateness of this attire to someone who wears such a shirt to work in the first place? It occurred to me to institute a policy that forbade the wearing of attire that one would not wear to accompany one’s grandmother to church, further assuming that granny carries a switch.  

 

This might just be a good rule of thumb for courtroom appearances, whether or not it’s constitutional. However, although respect for one’s grandmother was once axiomatic, this may no longer be the case. The larger question is what has happened to respect for others in general.  If obvious self-interest is not a sufficient incentive to dress appropriately, what can be expected when there is no reason more compelling than simple respect for the sensibilities of others? In the words of Yeats, perhaps

 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
Are full of passionate intensity.[1]  

 

To borrow again from Yeats, this would indeed merit from the judge “a gazeblank and pitiless as the sun….”[2]  

 

 

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