International tribunals are embedded in certain communities (e.g., regional, ideological, or professional groups), and they reflect and affect socio-cultural patterns prevailing in those communities. While the work of tribunals involves numerous socio-cultural issues, this Introduction only briefly addresses certain interactions between tribunals and social factors and processes, primarily those relating to social functions, power relations, meanings, rituals, and interactionist processes. International tribunals emerge from and operate in particular social environments, influenced by and influencing the distinctive socio-cultural features of these communities. Tribunals enjoy some “comparative advantages” and are often perceived as more neutral than the rival parties because, inter alia, adjudicators are commonly drawn from multiple state-societies and tribunals employ some powerful symbols. The interactions between tribunals and their “social habitats,” as well as with other societal actors functioning in these communities (such as the mass media or social movements), affect those tribunals’ normative influence and limits. Tribunals interact with a local community and are aware of the need to maintain their legitimacy in that community. If a tribunal’s ruling exceeds its legitimacy boundaries, its normative influence in the particular social group is likely to diminish (including its prospects for compliance). For example, tribunals’ judgments occasionally present historical narratives of past events, and some tribunals explicitly aim to influence collective memories. The influence of such judicial historical narratives is not guaranteed, and it also depends on interactions between the particular tribunal’s narrative and local communities. Such cases bring to the fore the complex social reality in which international tribunals operate and highlight that tribunals often interact with more than one social group. Enhancing the tribunal’s legitimacy in one community may entail diminishing its normative influence in another community. Tribunals operating in such a polarized social setting do not undertake pure rational choice calculation of their social costs and benefits in each community, and their considerations also relate to social issues, such as the collective identity of the particular tribunal or the social identity of the individual adjudicators. International tribunals do not directly encounter local communities, and their judicial rulings are mediated through existing cultural systems that include, for example, local values, social hierarchies, and symbols. Tribunals also interact with additional social agents in the relevant community, such as the mass media, social movements, and diverse governmental bodies. Consequently, a sociological analysis of international tribunals should explore these legal actors in the broader socio-cultural context in which tribunals operate and take into account a wide range of socio-cultural features characterizing the tribunals, the involved communities, and other social actors active in these communities.