Justice is the 11th Major Arcana card.  It represents balance, maintaining your equilibrium and having the courage to face the truth.  It can also symbolize the need for rational well-thought-out decisions and the ability to be fair in the distribution of the wealth and to determine where resources should be allocated for the good of everyone.  Justice usually represents a sense of fair-play, of balance and equality. 

"Negative:  Creating equilibrium, balance and fairness is a problem for your right now.  If the pendulum has been swinging in one direction, the reverse swing may create some difficulties for you.  You may be bending over backwards to be fair to others at some cost to yourself.  Or, you may be pushing you luck - be aware of the backswing!

Reversed:  You are creating a balance within your own life.  If you've been very serious, may you're lightening up a bit.  Or, if you've been very publicly active, maybe you're becoming more of a recluse.  Your bodily processes could be seeking a state of equilibrium - they could be swinging from one extreme to anther.  You're concerned with achieving some kind of psychological or internal balance in your life." - Gail Fairfield

How odd - the pumpkin-headed figure on the Halloween Justice card is balancing two shrunken heads against a rat.  I have no idea what the correct proportion needs to be to balance out such items, but obviously pumpkin-head is okay with it.  As with most jack-o-lanterns, he is both charmingly silly and disquietingly unsettling at the same time.  He seems happy but how can we really know what goes on behind those vacant eyes?  He reminds me of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz - simple and fair with his own internal sense of right and wrong that might not match society's views.  Somehow I get the sense that the black cat is there to ensure he adheres to best practices and won't let him get away with tilting the scales unfairly. 

I had a strong reaction to the bewigged figure on the BG Justice card (as, I must assume, I was meant to).  He looks like something out of the Inquisition holding a copy of the Malleus Malleficarum in one hand and a light candle in the other.  He seems harsh and unforgiving, sure of his moral rightness.  A shadowy figure stands behind him in a doorway and beyond the doorway we can see a room light by brilliant flames.  That sad thing is that at the time, the behaviors engaged in by the Inquisitors was considered just.  Even more ironic is that often the religious courts were more forgiving than the secular ones.  It's a reminder that what is considered justice can change over time.  Once upon a time it was considered just to own slaves.  Most societies no longer hold this viewpoint.

Both these cards express similar concepts of justice through different lenses.  What I get from them is that sometimes we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of justice.  Just because and act is societally acceptable does not truly make it just, fair or right.  And in a world that allows extenuating circumstances to absolve us from certain behaviors (does the Twinkie defense ring a bell?), it can be difficult to even have a common ground for what constitutes justice.  Sometimes being fair to others can bite us on the ass.  So I guess all we can really do is live our lives according to a standard that incorporates societally acceptable measure of justice and, where we feel it appropriate, to go beyond them in our own lives.  After all at the end of the day the one being we truly have to answer to is our own conscience.