Appropriate courtroom fashion?
At the 2nd District Court in Ogden, Utah, female reporter Morgan Briesmaster was barred by court security from entering the courtroom to cover a story because her sleeveless blouse (left) violated the official dress code.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz, which you may think is too easy, is this:
Was the court security unfair and unreasonable to bar reporter Briesmaster based on her shoulder-baring clothing?
Believe it or not, I don’t think so.
It’s not professional garb for a courtroom. A lawyer appearing before a judge that way would be rolling the dice: many judges would regard it as disrespectful, and say so.
I’ll never forget the impassioned speech I heard from a female lawyer at a legal convention in Nigeria, who said that young lawyers undermined respect for the system by refusing to wear the traditional unisex black suits worn by most lawyers in Africa. The courtroom is a special setting where decorum indicates respect for law and justice. Female reporters should know enough not show up in outfits that would be fashionable at a pool-side party, just as male reporters shouldn’t cover trials in Hawaiian shirts.
Her editor, however, would have been the best one to remind Briesmaster of her professional duties. Instead, he exhibited the habitual arrogance of the press:, arguing, in essence, “we don’t have to have standards; we’re journalists.” Courtrooms are having increasing difficulty resisting the downward trend in American respect, civility and manners. People come to court in T-shirts, flip-flops, and cut-offs, clothing that is both inappropriate and self-destructive, if you are a defendant. Those with the education, maturity and presumed experience to understand what a courtroom signifies should be role models, not saboteurs.
Having said that, however, I recognize that courtroom personnel can’t hold the press to more stringent standards of dress than the other slobs they are obligated to admit to court. The quiz is a trick question: it wasn’t unfair or unreasonable to tell Briesmaster to be professional and make an example of her; it was just futile. As we have seen in other settings, if the news media won’t police itself and insist on professionalism, nobody can make them. Thus the officials in Utah are being roundly mocked for trying to hold back the national tide of boorishness and disrespect for our institutions.
There is nothing wrong with having a strict dress code for court, but one will never stand long unless the public and the media understand that such codes are not about clothes, but about the key role of respect in making our institutions function. Once the argument becomes about bare shoulders, the battle is already lost.
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Ethics Alarms 
If the dress code says no bare shoulders then the security guards were right.
I don’t care if it’s 90’F, carry a light sweater or jacket and put it on when you go into the courtroom.
I always got a kick out of the angry, entitled, self-righteous Americans who were turned away from European churches because their legs or arms were bare.
Poor, little babies, no respect for anyone.
*sniff*
No problem at all with the dress code, as long as it’s clearly understood and consistently enforced.
However, if other women are let in with cleavage-flaunting outfits while this reporter gets booted for her demure but shoulder-baring blouse, there’s clearly a problem with the standard. Sounds to me like the court lost its grip on fair and consistent enforcement a long time ago.
The problem is that it CAN’T be enforced against defendants. They have to be there, even if they are dressed in a barrel. That shouldn’t give a reporter leave to dress in a barrel.
Americans in general are becoming either total slobs in their dress, or advertisements for sex in their lack thereof. I am not surprised at Breismaster’s dress (the photo wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t see the rest of the outfit): but take a look at the female news readers on TV. All the men in business suits, all the women in sleeveless (even in winter) dresses or blouses with plunging necklines and skirts/dresses with short hems to show as much leg as possible when they sit down. Professional? Nope. Eye-candy for male viewers? Yup. And a fair number of courtroom dramas on TV similarly have female DAs or attorneys dressed inappropriately: I’m sure in real courtrooms they would be advised by the judge to dress like the professionals they are supposed to be.
(Juries are just as bad: why show up to perform this civic duty in jeans and a tee-shirt? I assume judges can’t tell jurors how to dress, but I also assume that since most professional people manage to get out of jury duty, those who do serve are wearing their daily dress…)
As a professional woman I have always thought that if I wanted people to judge me as a professional I have to look like one. That means no cleavage (if I had one), and though dress slacks are okay, even in summer, there is always, always a jacket or blazer. Linen is nice… Walk around the business district of any big city and you can always tell which women are professionals and which ones are not. Instantly clear. So perhaps the courtroom is not the last bastion of professional, respectful dress, but soon enough it will be getting there.
P.S. “Casual Friday” was the moronic beginning of some of this, don’t you think?
P.P.S. I won’t go on about how the general public dresses when out on the streets, shopping, etc. Unbelievable that people allow themselves to be seen as such total, unkempt slobs.
I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I’m a casual guy to say the least. When I want to look spiffy, I put on a nicer t-shirt. On the other hand, I do realize that standards can be important.
The thing is, I don’t always have to care what society wants from me. Sometimes I even mess with people on purpose that way. Random people on the street or in a store thinking I’m uneducated and nonprofessional because I’m wearing jeans and a black t-shirt blazoned with a hardcore metal band? Whatever. Judge away, I don’t care. It’s fun to see how surprised some people are when they discover that I used to play in a classical orchestra (not pro-level, to be clear) or that I can actually read and have two college degrees. Being underestimated can be handy sometimes.
But I’m realistic enough to know that sometimes those judgments matter. I don’t dress like a metalhead at work because even though I’ve proven my ability many times over, my bosses could still downrate my commitment to my job because of it. So I may be the most informally dressed person in the office, but I’m still within the accepted mode (if only just).
If Briesmaster’s editor had criticized the dress code as an unenforceable or arbitrary standard, that would have made perfect sense. As far as I can tell from the limited information we have, that’s what it is (for better or worse). But instead he trots out some holier-than-thou platitude about journalistic privilege. At this point, American journalism is nothing more than a mess of maggots hiding in the hollow remains of Edward R. Murrow’s integrity.
I have no problem with jeans and a T-shirt for casual wear. Why would I? But I’d bet your jeans and T-shirts are clean and fit appropriately (your jeans don’t hang down well below your waist and flop all over the ground, do they?). Casual wear is casual wear: sloppy, unkempt, unclean clothing is something else.
I agree that clothing should not be the basis for judgments about a person’s socioeconomic status, intelligence, general attitudes, etc. But I also think that clothing should be appropriate to the general cultural environment one is in.
I have tried over the years to teach my son (another lover of jeans and black T-shirts) about being a “gentleman.” All that means (and it’s not snobbery) is adjusting your behavior to the environment you’re in and the people you’re with. You can say the F-word all you like in your own home; it is inappropriate and ungentlemanly to use that word in public or with people who you know will be offended by it. And he knew, when his beloved grandfather died and we were getting ready for the Arlington Cemetery funeral for this WWII Silver Star Army major, that he needed a new suit. No jeans and T-shirt for that, as it would not convey the respect he felt — for his grandfather, the ceremony, the site, and the military men who conducted the pageant-like burial. There was no need for me to make this point: he knew it instinctively. So it was new suit, dress shirt, tie, and dress shoes. He’s probably worn same about three times since, but he knew how to dress appropriately for the situation. And his behavior mirrored this attitude as well.
If general cultural norms require certain kinds of dress and behavior for specific venues and situations, it behooves all of us to pay attention to them. And frankly, for the most part I think these cultural norms are important because they convey an understanding of what is important and what is not, even if they are changing.
She should have the right to bare arms……
If the dress code is applied uniformly on all who enter the courtroom (with the exception of the defendant who, as you said, must be there) then I have no problem with it being enforced UNLESS the code itself places an undue burden on media access to the court. Then the code itself should be changed and then be uniformly applied to all.