CHIDI ANSELM ODINKALU contends that the directive of Nigeria’s Chief Justice is not far-reaching enough “The division between the two professions was well recognised by the end of the 16th century and by the end of the 17th was quite firm….While the solicitor spends much of his time trying to keep his clients out of court, there inevitably comes a time when he needs the services of what the Americans call ‘the trial lawyer’. In England, this is the barrister….” Richard du Cann, The Art of the Advocate, 32 (Revised Edition, 1993) On 20 June 2011, Willy Mutunga assumed office as the first Chief Justice of Kenya under the 2010 Constitution. A former president of the Law Society of Kenya, Mutunga possessed a doctorate degree in law and had worked as a law teacher. He had also lived in internal banishment, and was a former political detainee and exile. He came to the position from a role in philanthropy as the regional representative of the Ford Foundation in East Africa and was a principal facilitator of the new constitution. Chief Justice Mutunga’s unusual resume gave him a grounded view of law and its institutions in post-colonial society. It also equipped him to try something both necessary and ambitious. Kenya’s institutions of the law had been discredited under the old system. They desperately needed to be re-fashioned. Chief Justice Mutunga’s arrival in this role seemed timely. One of his first tasks was to lead the transformation of the institutions of the law and the judiciary in Kenya. The process was consultative, involving magistrates, judges, judicial workers, the public, political leaders, the media, communities, citizens, and consumers. Nearly one year into his tenure, on 31 May 2012, Chief Justice Mutunga launched a four-year long Judiciary Transformation Framework. It outlined a set of ideas designed to imbue the institutions of the law and judiciary in the country with the ethos of the new constitution. The Transformation Framework presented a stark diagnosis of an antediluvian system, out of touch with its people and impervious to change. In a passage that could be adapted with ease to Nigeria’s institutions of law and the judiciary, Kenya’s Transformation Framework addressed itself to institutions with a “founding history of dominance, power, prestige and remoteness, as opposed to service and equality. Further, its architecture, rules, dress code and other rituals have uprooted it from social reality.” The result, the document said, was a legal system perceived by the public as both “alien and insensitive.” One major aspect of this problem was the “dress and address” of the legal and judicial institutions. Many an aspiring career in post-colonial law is drawn to it by the attractions of the dressing of lawyers and judges, as well as the manner in which they are addressed. The original rationales for these were revelatory. It turns out that among the most compelling of the rationales, there is “a theatrical aspect [that] seeks to impress on laymen”, gives members of the profession “a useful anonymity and conformity”, and seeks to disguise members of the profession “to protect them from revenge-seeking defendants.” In the end, Kenya’s judges voted “to discard the wigs because in their words they are ‘torturous’, ‘colonial relics’, ‘cumbersome’, ‘lack uniformity’, ‘uncomfortable’, and ‘antique.’” They also voted to re-design the judicial robe and to dispense with “My Lord.” They are now addressed as “Your Honor.” In Kiswahili, that translates into “Mheshimiwa.” Surprisingly, Kenya’s courts and legal vocation have not collapsed. Instead, they seem to have made progress. Kenya is not the only country where this has occurred. In 2011, the Bar in Punjab and Haryana in India dispensed with addressing the bench as “My Lord” or “Your Lordship”, calling such appellations “relics of the colonial past”. In June 2022, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa in India, Srinivasan Muralidhar, issued a written notice requiring advocates and court users to “try and avoid addressing the judges of this bench as ‘My Lord’, ‘Your Lordship’, ‘Your Honour’ or with the prefix ‘Hon’ble. Any form of address consistent with the decorum of the court, including ‘Sir’, should suffice.” The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) triggered a muted debate on these matters of dress and address in the vocations of the law and the judiciary when she directed the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court to issue a circular on 13 July 2026 under the title “Prohibition of the Use of the Title ‘Barrister’ as a Prefix to Names.” In a country in which sundry crooners and Karaoke wannabes of diverse genres self-identify as “Barrister”, the heading of the Chief Registrar’s circular initially seemed ostentatious. It suggested a mag
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