NEWSLETTER-2020-metin

429 MISCELLANEOUS bond between the prosecutor and the presiding judge which ultimately, hindered the court’s impartiality. The Paris Court of Appeal held that the Turkish criminal court that convicted the defendant was apparently biased because of the marital relationship between the prosecutor and the presiding judge and the enforcement of a judgment rendered by such an impartial and apparently biased court would be a violation of the Convention, as well as international public order. As a consequence, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the decision rendered by the Court of First Instance of Paris and denied exequatur . Guidance from the Convention It is important to note that the Paris Court of Appeal’s decision is, nonetheless compatible with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (“Court”). As mentioned before, Article 6(1) of the Convention requires a tribunal to be impartial, which denotes the ab- sence of prejudice or bias, and its existence can be tested in various ways by the Court; namely, using (i) a subjective standard and ( ii) an objective standard 4 . Here, we will only focus on the objective stan- dard for the sake of this article. Under the objective test, when applied to a person sitting on a bench, it must be determined whether there exist facts raising doubts as to his or her impartiality. The objective test mostly concerns hierar- chical or other links between the judge and other persons involved in the proceedings, which objectively justify misgivings as to the impar- tiality of the tribunal and, thus, fail to meet the Convention standard under the objective test. As rightfully put by the Court, itself, “ What is at stake is the confidence which the courts in a democratic society must inspire in the public, including the accused. Thus, any judge in respect of whom there is a legitimate reason to fear a lack of impartial- ity must withdraw ” 5 . 4 European Court of Human Rights, Guide on Article 6 of the European Conven- tion on Human Rights, Right to a Fair Trial (Criminal Limb), updated on 31 Au- gust 2020, p. 23. 5 European Court of Human Rights, p. 24.