Westminster There will be no fanfare, but legal history will be made today when judges across civil courts break with 300 years of tradition and ditch their horsehair wigs for modern gowns.

The momentous change passed almost unnoticed yesterday at the traditional procession of judges from Westminster Abbey to the judges’ breakfast in the Palace of Westminster.

But walking among their traditionally robed colleagues, a group of district judges sported the new Betty Jackson-designed modern robes - the climax of many months of debate and dissent. They bowed to tradition and topped the outfit with barristers’ wigs, but from today both they and senior judges in civil and family courts will wear the new robes - minus wigs.

Verdicts are mixed on the new dark blue gaberdine robe with velvet facings: it has been described as making judges look like “warlords from outer space” or a “cross between a Star Trek costume and a fascist storm-trooper’s uniform”.

Today the modernising reform reaches all civil cases in county court, High Court and Court of Appeal and family cases heard in public. Criminal trials are not affected and judges will carry on as usual in traditional wigs and gowns for those cases.

Explore Law

• Corporate Law

• Public Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Student Law

• Law Reports

Times Recommends

• City law firms prepare for painful year ahead
• Welcome to 2009: the year of the regulator
• Thacher Proffitt is latest US legal casualty