28 MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT A. The Chamber judgment 94. The Chamber found that there had been no violation of Article 10 of the Convention. It noted that the applicant had not confined himself to factual statements concerning the ongoing proceedings, but had accompanied them with value judgments which cast doubt on the impartiality and fairness of a judge. 95. The Chamber, after noting that the investigating judge in question was no longer handling the case, took the view, firstly, that the applicant should have waited for the outcome of his request addressed the previous day to the Minister of Justice seeking an investigation by the General Inspectorate of Judicial Services into the alleged numerous shortcomings in the judicial investigation and, secondly, that the applicant had already successfully used a legal remedy to seek to cure any defects in the proceedings and the judge concerned by his remarks had been taken off the case. In view of the foregoing and the use of terms that the Chamber found particularly harsh, it took the view that the applicant had overstepped the limits that lawyers had to observe in publicly criticising the justice system. It added that its conclusion was reinforced by the seriousness of the accusations made in the article, and that, also having regard to the chronology of the events, it could be inferred that the applicant’s remarks were driven by a degree of personal animosity towards the judge. As to the “proportionality” of the sanction, the Chamber found that a fine of EUR 4,000, together with an award of EUR 7,500 in damages to each of the judges, did not appear excessive. B. The parties’ submissions before the Grand Chamber 1. The applicant 96. The applicant argued that the Court’s case-law guaranteed strong protection to the freedom of expression of lawyers, who played a key role in the administration of justice and the upholding of the rule of law, with any restriction having to remain exceptional. Such protection could be explained by two reasons: firstly, no special circumstances could justify affording a wide margin of appreciation to States, bearing in mind that European and international texts, on the contrary, protected lawyers in the activity of defending their clients; secondly, their freedom of expression was linked to their clients’ right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the Convention. He further observed that the right of lawyers to make press statements as part of their clients’ defence was expressly acknowledged and that, in principle, there was, at European level, significant tolerance of lawyers’ criticism of judges, even when made in a public and media setting. He submitted, however, that the Chamber judgment highlighted some major uncertainties and vagaries in the case-law that affected the exercise of such freedom,