Along with the legislative "I see strangers!" this is one of my favorite procedural phrases - and one which has popped up this week in an English court:

A Muslim lawyer was at the centre of another controversy in Britain over the wearing of full-face veils on Wednesday after she twice refused to remove it during a hearing, leading the judge to adjourn the case. Shabnam Mughal, 27, insisted she had the right to use the black veil covering all but her eyes during the immigration tribunal hearing in central England at Stoke-on-Trent on Monday, despite the judge saying that he could not hear her.

There is nothing racist on a first level about this - though you can never know what happened in the room on the day. Though I have not heard it said myself, there was a lawyer as I recall in Ottawa who thought wearing either a Colonel Sanders style bow or a cowboy's string tie was the height of fashion. He was not heard, too. This differs, of course, from being told by that the court does not need to hear you. In my first year I heard it but had to have a Crown whisper loudly to me to sit down and shut up.