MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 35 however strong they might be, if they affected an opponent, a judge or a fellow lawyer. 120. Every lawyer, however well known, was the custodian of the client’s word. When a case came to public attention, it was the lawyer’s responsibility to continue to defend that client, whether by taking any necessary ad hoc proceedings or by adding his own voice to the media storm, as had become the norm. This was no longer a lawyer’s right but a duty attached to his position, whether the story of the case broke some time before any public hearing, as was often the case, or later. 121. Lawyers were entitled to criticise the court’s ruling and to relay any criticism their clients might wish to make. The lawyer’s comments were then necessarily interpreted and received by the public as partial and subjective. The parallel between the judge’s duty of discretion and the lawyer’s freedom of speech was not convincing. Whilst the word of the judge would be received as objective, the words of the lawyer were taken as the expression of a protest by a party. It was not unusual, therefore, for a judge to be obliged to remain silent, whilst comments by a lawyer, for a party to the proceedings, would in no way disrupt the independence and authority of the justice system. 122. The third-party interveners observed that, while the French courts had always strictly applied the immunity referred to in section 41 of the 1881 Act to judicial comments alone, they were not unaware that lawyers had to contend with certain developments when their cases attracted media attention. They cited a recent example from a high-profile case where a lawyer had been prosecuted for defaming a lawyer for the opposing party. The Paris tribunal de grande instance had accepted his plea of good faith, even though his comments had been particularly excessive and based only on his personal belief, as “they came from a passionate lawyer who dedicated all of his energy to defending his client and who could not restrict his freedom of expression on the sole ground that he was referring to his case in front of journalists rather than addressing judges” (final judgment of the Seventeenth Division of the Paris tribunal de grande instance of 20 October 2010). The distinction between judicial and extrajudicial expression had therefore become outdated. The word of a lawyer was in fact based on a duty to inform; like journalists, lawyers were also “watchdogs of democracy”. 123. The third-party interveners submitted, lastly, that there was an obligation of proportionality in such matters both for lawyers and for the State. Lawyers had a very difficult role and this duty of proportionality reflected their duties of sensitivity and moderation, from which they could depart only where this was justified by the defence of their client and by the attacks or pressure they were under. As regards the State, the third-party interveners were of the view that lawyers should normally be granted immunity where their comments, however excessive, were linked to the