MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS 59 against the State in respect of which they were elected, because when a case which has been decided by the Chamber is referred to the Grand Chamber under Article 43 of the Convention, such judge finds himself or herself in the situation where he or she has already sat in that case as a member of the Chamber. However, such speculation is rebutted by reference to Article 26 § 4 of the Convention, which explicitly requires that the judge elected in respect of the High Contracting Party concerned be an ex officio member of the Grand Chamber. Accordingly, the inclusion of the “national” judge in the composition of the Grand Chamber is, in the most formal way, compelled by the Convention itself and is, in this respect, absolutely necessary. In view of such situations pertaining to the continuous practice of this Court, the plausibility of any speculation regarding the objective “partiality” of Judge J.M. and the whole bench vis-à-vis the applicant is close to zero. That judge had expressed his support for Judge M. (whose relationship with the applicant appeared to be, so to say, problematic) many years before and in an entirely different context, and there are no indications that he had ever expressed an opinion on Mr Morice’s case or personality, or on the whole politically sensitive context of that case, prior to its being decided by the bench of which he was part. I am certainly not implying that in a French (or other national) court the “absolute necessity” of the inclusion of a particular judge in the composition of a judicial body which has to decide a particular case can be substantiated exhaustively by, say, mere reference to a statute which explicitly requires such inclusion, in the same way that the Convention requires inclusion of “national” judges in the Grand Chamber. Even had such a statute been in place, it probably would have been legally reproachable. However – and not merely in theory – there can be other reasons (not only of a formal legal but also of a factual nature) which would compel the inclusion of a particular judge in the composition of a bench or, to put it in a somewhat milder way, justify his or her non-exclusion therefrom. In the Court’s case-law, one can find decisions and judgments where the previous involvement of a judge in the same case had not amounted to a violation of the right to a fair trial protected by the Convention. To give just a couple of examples, even the mere fact that a judge had already taken decisions regarding a particular person “cannot in itself be regarded as justifying doubts as to his or her impartiality” (see Ökten v. Turkey (dec.), no. 22347/07, § 41, 3 November 2011); in an even earlier case the Court had held that “no ground for legitimate suspicion [could] be discerned in the fact that three of the seven members of the disciplinary section had taken part in the first decision” (see Diennet v. France, 26 September 1995, § 38, Series A no. 325-A). Every case has to be decided on its own merits. In the present case, had the issue of Judge J.M.’s “partiality” been raised by the applicant in the proper course, such allegation would have been authoritatively dismissed as based