The global dimension of the Second World War shaped the forms of transitional justice in the following years and made the second half of the 1940s a legal moment in international history. This special issue takes a fresh look at the two major post-Second-World-War-trials, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945–1946) and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (1946–1948). From the moment these two major trials took place, historians and legal scholars were engaged in a lively and often controversial exchange that proved to have long-term effects, in Europe, Asia and beyond. By analysing the interrelation between legal procedures and historiography starting at Nuremberg and Tokyo, the contributors examine these transfer processes and question how the perception of the actors involved turned judges into historians and historians into judges. They demonstrate that courtroom practices and judicial procedures affected the global as well as regional historiographies of the Second World War until this very day.