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I swear I just posted in a topic recently about this same issue. I can't remember precisely what I said, but I'll try to reconstruct it.

Justice is a tricky subject for it is often used and as often misused. We have justice in the context of our legal system and social betterment, but we also have justice in terms of vigilantees and revenge seekers. Justice has some strong intersects with moral/ethical systems, yet often they fail to have a one-to-one correspondence with each other. That makes defining justice very difficult. It has several definitions depending on how you see justice as interacting with morals and ethics, as well as with legal obligations.

Justice, generally, though, claims to promote fairness and equality between human beings. Some could argue that it should extend to nonhumans as well and the Earth itself. Fairness and equality does NOT mean, however, sameness. I see it primarily as meaning equal treatment under the law. So, in other words, if a rich white man murders someone, he will serve the same penalty under the justice system as a poor black woman.

Often, though, justice fails to do a justice. The legal system endlessly fails to consider all the sittuational factors that went into a particular sittuation and can either be too lenient or too harsh in sentancing. But then do we even have the right to hash out someone else's fate? We have the right insofar as we have the ability, but by placing judgement upon others, we place a judgement filled with personal biases. That's sort of where the ethics and morals come in.

There isn't any way to eliminate these biases, so I do not believe an ideal system could ever be constructed. I do think that ideally, there should be input from people from a variety of backgrounds and diverse ethical and moral sentiments. That way you get a fairer (more just, ironically) representation of how people feel justice should be served.

Group or societal revenge carried out after proving guilt.

Juries are won over by emotion most times and the argument 'don't you feel better now' is used all the time. Until the perfect court appears, emotion shall swing courts favors.