144 Legal Digest of International Fair Trial Rights 6.6.5 Grounds for restricting the right to choose one’s legal representative The right to legal assistance of one’s choosing is not an absolute right and may be limited in two situations. First, where a person relies on legal aid (See also 6.6.7), the legally aided person has, in principle, no right to choose her/his legal representative.633 The European Court of Human Rights has stated that the right to a counsel of one’s own choosing is subject to certain limitations where legal aid is concerned. When appointing defence counsel, the European Court conceded that authorities may certainly have regard to an accused’s wishes, but these wishes can be overridden when there are relevant and sufficient grounds for holding that this is necessary.634 A violation of the right to chose one’s own counsel was found in Lopez v Uruguay, where Lopez and several others were forced, under threats to refrain from seeking any legal counsel other than Colonel Mario Rodriguez, in proceedings before a Military Tribunal.635 The second limitation on the right to choose one’s counsel, even if a person is paying privately, occurs as a result of the fact that the State is entitled to regulate the appearance of counsel before courts and their obligation to respect certain principles of professional conduct.636 In Ensslin and Others v Germany, the European Commission of Human Rights did not find that the exclusion of certain lawyers from the defence, on the ground of their affiliation to the criminal association of the accused, amounted to a violation of Article 6.637 6.6.6 Confidential and privileged communications with counsel Nowhere in Article 14 of the ICCPR or Article 6 of the ECHR is it stated that consultations with counsel should be private or that communications between lawyer and client, whether oral or in writing, should be privileged. Despite this, the special nature of the lawyerclient relationship – and the need for confidence and privacy to enable counsel to obtain full instructions in order to prepare and defend a case – have been treated as requiring that counsel be able to meet their clients in private and to communicate in conditions that fully respect the confidentiality of their communications.638 In S. v Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights considered that the accused’s right to communicate with his advocate out of hearing of a third person is part of the basic requirements of a fair trial in a democratic society and follows from Article 6(3)(c) of the ECHR. If a lawyer were unable to confer with her/his client and receive confidential instructions from the client without such surveillance, the European Court has taken the view that the legal assistance would lose much of its usefulness, whereas the ECHR is intended to guarantee rights that are pracGuide No. 1, op. cit., note 284, p. 63–69. See also UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, 1990, para 16, 18, 20. 633 Lagerblom v Sweden [2003] ECHR 28, para 54; and Teesdale v Trinidad and Tobago, HRC Communication 677/1996, UN Doc CCPR/C/74/D/677/1996 (2002), para 9.6. 634 Lagerblom v Sweden [2003] ECHR 28, para 54. 635 Lopez v Uruguay, HRC Communication 52/1979, UN Doc CCPR/C/OP/1 at 88 (1984), para 13. 636 Ensslin and Others v Germany [1978] ECHR, para 20. 637 Ensslin and Others v Germany [1978] ECHR, para 21. 638 UN Human Rights Committee, CCPR General Comment 32 (2007), para 34.