9 DE CUBBER v. BELGIUM JUGDMENT - in the further alternative, that a finding of violation would entail serious consequences for courts, such as the Oudenaarde criminal court, with "limited staff". A. The Government’s principal plea 24. In its Piersack judgment of 1 October 1982, the Court specified that impartiality can "be tested in various ways": a distinction should be drawn "between a subjective approach, that is endeavouring to ascertain the personal conviction of a given judge in a given case, and an objective approach, that is determining whether he offered guarantees sufficient to exclude any legitimate doubt in this respect" (Series A no. 53, p. 14, para. 30). 25. As to the subjective approach, the applicant alleged before the Commission that Mr. Pilate had for years shown himself somewhat relentless in regard to his (the applicant’s) affairs (see paragraphs 45-47 of the Commission’s report), but his lawyer did not maintain this line of argument before the Court; the Commission, for its part, rejected the Government’s criticism that it had made a subjective analysis (see paragraphs 63, 68-69 and 72-73 of the report; verbatim record of the hearings held on 23 May 1984). However this may be, the personal impartiality of a judge is to be presumed until there is proof to the contrary (see the same judgment, loc. cit.), and in the present case no such proof is to be found in the evidence adduced before the Court. In particular, there is nothing to indicate that in previous cases Mr. Pilate had displayed any hostility or ill-will towards Mr. De Cubber (see paragraph 9 above) or that he had "finally arranged", for reasons extraneous to the normal rules governing the allocation of cases, to have assigned to him each of the three preliminary investigations opened in respect of the applicant in 1977 (see paragraphs 8, 10 and 16 above; paragraph 46 of the Commission’s report). 26. However, it is not possible for the Court to confine itself to a purely subjective test; account must also be taken of considerations relating to the functions exercised and to internal organisation (the objective approach). In this regard, even appearances may be important; in the words of the English maxim quoted in, for example, the Delcourt judgment of 17 January 1970 (Series A no. 11, p. 17, para. 31), "justice must not only be done: it must also be seen to be done". As the Belgian Court of Cassation has observed (21 February 1979, Pasicrisie 1979, I, p. 750), any judge in respect of whom there is a legitimate reason to fear a lack of impartiality must withdraw. What is at stake is the confidence which the courts in a democratic society must inspire in the public and above all, as far as criminal proceedings are concerned, in the accused (see the above-mentioned judgment of 1 October 1982, pp. 14-15, para. 30).