Justice Tarot Card Meaning

Justice upright

A crowned figure sits between two pillars holding a sword upright and a pair of scales. Waite says the card shows the moral law that gives each person according to their works. Act with integrity, weigh the facts, and expect consequences that match what has really been done.

Justice reversed

Waite reversed lists legal complications, bias and excessive severity. If this appears, check paperwork, ask for a second opinion and make sure you are hearing every side.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is Justice a yes or no?

Upright: Mixed / not yet. Yes if you are acting fairly and the facts support you; otherwise the scales tip the other way.

Reversed: Reversed, Justice reads as a gentle no: bias, delay, unfairness.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the Justice card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Scales — Waite: justice that weighs each person by their works
• Sword — with the scales, the traditional emblem of Justice Waite says she carries
• Two pillars — Waite links them to the High Priestess's pillars, opening onto a different world

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.

Reversed: law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.