58 MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE KŪRIS 1. My disagreement with the majority concerns two issues. Neither of them are to be considered so prominent as to cast doubt on the overall finding of a violation of Articles 6 § 1 and 10 of the Convention, to which I subscribe. 2. The reasoning, as laid out in paragraphs 89 to 91 of the judgment, includes two factual circumstances that are important for the finding of a violation of Article 6 § 1. The first is that Judge J.M. was a member of the bench which had decided the applicant’s case, although it is explicitly acknowledged that “it is impossible to ascertain [his] actual influence on that occasion”. The argument that Judge J.M. was merely one of ten judges in that formation “is not decisive for the objective-impartiality issue under Article 6 § 1”, it being his “unascertained influence” which is regarded as tainting the impartiality of that court with “a genuine doubt” (see paragraph 89 of the judgment). In this context, the point about impartiality being “open to a genuine doubt” is meant to refer to the objective impartiality of Judge J.M. himself and, by extension, that of the whole bench. The Court is not willing to openly question Judge J.M.’s subjective impartiality; rather it is of the view that the fact that the applicant could have thought that he had some grounds on which to question Judge J.M.’s subjective impartiality had a bearing on the objective impartiality of that judge and of the formation as a whole. Although the Court does not question Judge J.M.’s subjective impartiality explicitly and directly, it does so implicitly and indirectly, because the very hint of that judge’s influence on the outcome of the case suggests that it could also have been such as to determine a conclusion which was unfavourable to the applicant and that, but for that influence, the outcome might have been different. The second circumstance is that the applicant had not been informed that Judge J.M. would be sitting on the bench in his case. On the contrary, the information available to him at the material time gave him no reason to expect that this particular judge would be in the composition of the judicial body which had to decide his case. Because of this concealment (whatever the reason), the applicant “had no opportunity to challenge [Judge] J.M.’s presence or to make any submissions on the issue of the judicial body’s impartiality in that connection” (see paragraph 90 of the judgment and paragraph 52 referred to therein). In my opinion, the first of these two circumstances is by itself of no legal importance. We do not and cannot know whether any opinion that Judge J.M. may have expressed in the deliberations in that case was at all unfavourable to the applicant. Thus, it is mere speculation that the judge could have had a greater or lesser influence on the outcome of the applicant’s case. One could equally speculate on the lack of impartiality of – as they are routinely called – “national” judges of this Court, in cases