A lot of judges do impose dress codes in their court rooms, especially for officers of the court. It's harder to impose them on laypersons appearing in court though because a lot of them don't have anything else to wear, or they're having to come into court from their dirty jobs and it's impractical for them to get cleaned up and change clothes. I'm a lawyer in court all the time and I do see judges sometimes jumping on lawyers who are improperly dressed and sometimes on those coming before them. Usually it's because someone is wearing clothes that are far too revealing or wearing some T-shirt with a disrespectful slogan on it or something like that. Most judges don't usually go too nuts with dress codes though or they'd never dispose of their cases because they'd be kicking out most of the people who appear in court only to try to get them return another day (and getting people to show up for court is not as easy as you might think) . Sometimes I'll see a judge get mad and start an overly restrictive dress code but it's never very long before he backs down because it just causes too many problems.
Spot on. Just think of how well this judge could eliminate distractions if she just made all females in her court wear burhkas.