In assessing the challenges faced by the legal apparatus at the outset of the trials, this chapter demonstrates how the political promises for a swift handling of the trials were jeopardised by the limited capacity of the institutions entrusted with administering them, generating a whole new set of political and institutional tensions. These tensions were in turn compounded by the difficulties faced by the judiciary in interpreting the provisions adopted during the war and applying them to the situation on the ground. In addition, this chapter looks at three distinct groups to whose opposition to different aspects of the trials the Ministry of Justice and the Director of Public Prosecutions had to respond to during the remainder of 1945: industrial workers, jurists and opposition politicians. Within months of the liberation, this chapter shows, the trials that were meant to unite the liberated nation had become a politically contested topic.