Introduction The central task of this chapter is to introduce the institutions of international criminal trials and their unique characteristics, and to do this against a prevailing and broader paradox of criminal justice; that the trial should be its structural and functional exemplar, while the majority of the justice resolutions are achieved outside the trial setting. More than a domestic contradiction, at the global level, that the trial is represented and legitimated in this way is remarkable, recalling the wider peace and conflict resolution aims of international criminal justice that do not conventionally engage with trial capacity. Conflict transformation, peace and reconciliation are arguably much less compatible with contemporary notions of trial justice, 1 while at the same time being more important as legitimators of ICJ’s institutional establishment and procedural presence in the global realm.