Information Note on the Court’s case-law 19

June 2000

Salaman v. the United Kingdom (dec.) - 43505/98

Decision 15.6.2000 [Section I]

Article 6

Civil proceedings

Article 6-1

Impartial tribunal

Failure of judges to disclose their membership of the freemasons in a case where one of the parties is also a freemason: inadmissible

The applicant was appointed executor and beneficiary under the will of B., a freemason, wh o died in 1992. The will, drawn up professionally in June 1991, left a large part of the estate to the applicant, subject to a life interest in the residuary estate to the deceased’s brother, allegedly also a freemason. In August 1991, B. had made a manusc ript codicil endorsed on the back of a photocopy of the will by which he purported to revoke the will. The High Court found, upon the deceased's brother’s application, that the will had been validly revoked. The applicant appealed against this decision. Th e Court of Appeal concluded that there was no substance to the appeal. The applicant was refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords. He claims that he later learned that the trial judge and one of the Court of Appeal judges were freemasons. He claimed t hat there was no means of discovering this at the time of the hearing.

Inadmissible under Article 6 § 1: The applicant in fact knew of the appeal court judge’s membership of the freemasons before seeking leave to appeal to the House of Lords but failed to include it as a ground. He has therefore failed to exhaust domestic remedies in this respect. As to the trial judge, it is undisputed that both he and the deceased were freemasons, although it is less clear whether the deceased’s brother also was, but whet her he was or not there is no evidence that the judge was aware that he was. Nor does there appear to be any element in the case which rendered the judge’s membership of the freemasons of relevance to the issues to be decided. There is thus no objective el ement present which would give rise to any appearance of a risk of bias and it has been shown that a judge’s membership of the freemasons in the United Kingdom in itself raises doubts as to his impartiality where a witness or a party is also a freemason; there is no reason to doubt that a judge would not regard his oath on taking judicial office as taking precedence over any other social commitments or obligations: manifestly ill-founded.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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