MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS 61 the outcome of the applicant’s case. I am sure that this unfortunate hint should have been omitted. Any speculation about that judge’s “actual influence” on the outcome of the case casts an unnecessary and – even more importantly – unjustified shadow of doubt on that judge’s integrity. This finding, last but not least, is not in line with the Court’s case-law and mission. 3. My other disagreement with the majority relates to paragraph 132 of the judgment. Therein the Court repeats its dictum, incautiously employed, inter alia, in the Grand Chamber judgment in Kyprianou v. Cyprus (as well as in some Chamber cases), that the “special status” (or “specific status” here in paragraph 132) of lawyers gives them “a central position in the administration of justice” as “intermediaries between the public and the courts” (see Kyprianou v. Cyprus [GC], no. 73797/01, § 173, ECHR 2005-XIII). I cannot agree with such a characteristic. This is a matter of principle. The adjectives “special” or “specific” do not mean “central”. A lawyer always represents a party and by definition is not able to occupy “a central position in the administration of justice”. A party is never “central”, nor can its representative be. Those with a “central position in the administration of justice” are the judges (for good or, as is unfortunately sometimes the case, for ill). The “intermediaries between the public and the courts” are the courts’ spokespersons, press representatives or – in their own right – journalists, but in no way lawyers, who represent parties. A lawyer acts in a party’s interests, for the benefit of a client and, as a rule, is remunerated by the latter. A lawyer has to heed the represented party’s interests even when they are in opposition to those of “the public”, i.e., society and the State. This is not meant to deny or diminish the importance of the function of lawyers. It is true that they can and do contribute to seeking justice and help courts to exercise their mission, but lawyers may also aim at obstructing the pursuit of justice in the interests of their clients – and occasionally do so. It depends. A party represented by a lawyer may find himself or herself in the courtroom because he or she seeks justice, but it is probably no less frequent for the lawyer to represent a party against whom justice is sought. Every dictum has the potential to be developed, in some future case, into a ratio. Regarding this particular dictum, I should probably say “danger” rather than “potential”. Repetition, in yet another judgment of this Court’s Grand Chamber, of the mantra about lawyers ostensibly occupying “a central position in the administration of justice” and of being “intermediaries between the public and the courts”, especially when such a characteristic is not, in the Court’s case-law, attributed anywhere to the other party, i.e., the prosecution, distorts the picture. As to the case at hand, it could have been decided, with no disadvantage to the Court’s findings, without recourse to this uncritical repetition.