Are political trials necessary? Do they reflect something about the nature of politics and law which makes them inevitable in every society? Or, are political trials a disease of both politics and law? Predictably, totalitarian regimes employ political trials-some sensational, most secret-in order to accomplish the obvious ends of total power: the total control of a total population. Stalin's purge trials and the Nazi Peoples' Court were juridical nightmares, demonstrating that corrupted absolute power tends toward absolute self-justification. Do such "trials" have anything in common with other trials which must also be called political, including the Wounded Knee trial, the trials of the Boston Five, the Chicago Seven, and the Berrigan brothers, or even of Galileo, Joan of Arc, and Socrates? Do political trials make a positive contribution to an open and democratic society? This Article concludes that they do make a positive contribution to an open and democratic society. They bring together for public consideration society's basic contradictions, through an examination of competing values and loyalties. They are not incompatible with the rule of law, and they are best understood by examining the questions they raise.