Mad Law Prof Patricia J. Wiliams asks: “If the nation’s first female Solicitor General breaks a 139-year-old tradition and doesn’t wear a morning coat, can she still do her job with style?”

She writes:

Of the details one misses with no television coverage of the Supreme Court, surely the quaintest is that the Solicitor General of the United States must wear tails:more formally known as a morning coat:when arguing the government’s cases. Barack Obama’s new nominee for that position is Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan. If confirmed, she will be the first woman ever to hold that position, and as such her very presence triggers an epiphenomenal fashion crisis that shakes American socio-legal tradition to its very roots.

Read the whole essay here.