43 public. To the contrary, the record of the hearings with the Council shows that the alleged victims stated that they did not know whether the membership of the Council had been determined and did not know who the members of the Council would be. It was not until after the hearing had been held and the evidence heard and examined that the Chair of the Council selected the persons who would serve on the Judicial Career Council. The Council’s members were selected specifically to take up the dismissals of the victims in this case. 133. The Commission notes that in the end, at least four members of the Council were career judges.222 The Commission does not have any information suggesting that the disciplinary proceedings that members of the Council would face would be in any way different from those faced by other judges in the country. The Commission notes, therefore, that under Article 313 of the Constitution judges serving on the Council could be subject to the disciplinary authority of the Supreme Court whose decision they were called upon to review in an ad hoc proceeding that, as previously observed, did not follow the system prescribed in the Constitution. 134. All these factors, combined with the political atmosphere in which the Judicial Branch, following the Supreme Court’s lead, sought to legitimize the coup d’état which the alleged victims opposed, point to the conclusion that the latter were not given a hearing by independent authorities who were adequately shielded against external pressures. 135. Finally, concerning the guarantee of impartiality, the Inter-American Court has written that “[t]he impartiality of a court implies that its members have no direct interest in, a pre-established viewpoint on, or a preference for one of the parties, and that they are not involved in the controversy.”223 As the European Court has observed, when the impartiality of a tribunal is being determined, regard must be had not only to the personal conviction and behavior of a particular judge in a given case –the subjective approach- but also to whether it afforded sufficient guarantees to exclude any legitimate doubt in this respect.224 136. The Commission observes that as the European Court of Human Rights has pointed out, the objective test of a judge’s impartiality must determine whether, quite apart from the judge’s conduct, there are ascertainable facts which may raise doubts as to the judge’s impartiality. The Court commented that even appearances may be of certain importance and wrote that “[w]hat is at stake is the confidence which the courts in a democratic society must inspire in the public.”225 The Commission has written that indicia or prima facie evidence may turn out to be especially important when determining whether there are objective factors that could compromise impartiality.226 222 This, taking into consideration that the Judicial Career Service Act provides that one of the five members of the Judicial Career Council shall be a member of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which would be independent of the three branches of government, under the terms of Legislative Decree No 228-93, in force since January 6, 1994. Available [in Spanish] at: http://www.oas.org/juridico/PDFs/mesicic4_hnd_sc_anex15.pdf 223 I/A Court H.R., Palamara Iribarne v. Chile. Judgment of November 22, 2005. Series C No. 135, paragraph 146. 224 See Thomann v. Switzerland, Judgment of June 10, 1996, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-III, p. 815, § 30. 225 ECHR, Caso Wettstein vs. Suiza, Aplication No. 33958/96, Judgment, 21 de diciembre de 2000, párr. 44. 226 IACHR, Application to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Ana María Ruggeri Cova, Perkins Rocha Contreras and Juan Carlos Apitz (“First Court of Administrative Disputes”) (Case 12.489) against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, November 29, 2006, paragraph 129.