Wearing white and black formally is no longer a rule in the Faculty of Law, it is now our culture. When people see us, they know us by our comportment and our cultural attire. Some would hail us saying, “the law”, “barrister”, some would beef us telling us we look like a choristers. They call it jesting but it’s our pride. Yes, it is.
The irony of it all is that, do most of us really know what brought about the white and black or rather the implications or deeper meaning it carries? It dawned on me last semester when one of my friends asked me, “Why do you guys choose to always wear black and white? Why not red and black or green and butter?” I was short of words that very day, I gazed at the wall thinking of what to say even if to fabricate but it seemed nothing good would come out of my brain. I boycotted the question and furthered our discussion on another issue.
All I knew then was that traditionally, people attach a lot of meaning, most of which are negative to the use of black colour. Some feel it represents opaqueness which implies lack of transparency and also mystery. From the religious perspective, most people would say black is the colour of the devil. Black is believed to be evil. Should I say we are evil?
Confused, I decided it’s better to ask some of my friends in the Faculty. However, to my greatest surprise, they seem to know next to nothing about it. I then decided to surf the internet. I was confused the more because there were a number of explanations stated, both historical and symbolic one.
Historically, I can deduced that one of the widely regarded one according to quora, is that this dressing code dates back at least the seventeenth century. When Queen Mary II died of small pox, her widower, the bisexual king Williams III was said to have ordered all judges and lawyers to attend court wearing black gowns as a token of public mourning for the queen. It so happened that the order was never formally rescinded or revoked. However, lawyers were said to have liked and adopted the uniform because it gave them a distinct intimidating presence in the court. Modern lawyers and potential lawyers (law students as we are) gracefully adopt that till today.
Symbolically, it is believed that black signifies notion of seriousness and soberness. Also, it exhibits lawyers as being meticulous with their of opinions, thoughts, interpretation of the law and processes, their character of being static and not ready to leave what they said or compromise. White connotes purity; peace and transparency which exemplifies that lawyer’s arguments are always based in facts which are projected without any iota of impurities or intended machinations.
This piece exemplifies that the white and black we do wear is more than making us look prestigious, decent or smart but it carries an identity role which is only distinct to the profession.
