MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 23 the same information, namely that the Criminal Division was to sit as a reduced bench. The reduced bench comprised the President of the Division, the senior judge (doyen) and the reporting judge, and as Judge J.M. occupied none of those positions he could not have been expected to sit. 69. On the merits, the applicant did not claim that Judge J.M. had displayed any personal bias against him and was not calling into question that judge’s right to freedom of expression. He complained merely of Judge J.M.’s presence on the bench, which in his view rendered his fears of a lack of impartiality objectively justified and legitimate. In view of the support expressed by J.M. in favour of Judge M. in the context of another high-profile case with the same protagonists, there was serious doubt as to the impartiality of the Criminal Division and his fears in that connection could be regarded as objectively justified. 2. The Government 70. The Government observed that there was no question of any lack of subjective impartiality on the part of Judge J.M. and that it was therefore necessary to determine whether the circumstances of the case were such as to raise serious doubts regarding the Court of Cassation’s objective impartiality. Referring to the effect of the statement made in July 2000 by Judge J.M., who at the time had been serving on the Paris tribunal de grande instance, they pointed out that the statement, made many years before the hearing of the Criminal Division, concerned a different case from the present one and that the terms used reflected a personal position which related only to the conditions in which disciplinary proceedings against a fellow judge had become known. The Government concluded that those remarks, which were limited in scope and had been made a long time before, were not sufficient to establish that, in his capacity as judge of the Court of Cassation, J.M. lacked objective impartiality. 71. The Government further stated that appeals on points of law were extraordinary remedies and that the Court of Cassation’s oversight was restricted to compliance with the law. Moreover, it was an enlarged bench of the Criminal Division, comprising ten judges, that had considered the case. 72. The Government accordingly argued that Article 6 § 1 of the Convention had not been breached. C. The Court’s assessment 1. General principles 73. The Court reiterates that impartiality normally denotes the absence of prejudice or bias and its existence or otherwise can be tested in various ways. According to the Court’s settled case-law, the existence of