The present study examined the impact of the accessibility of justice-related concepts when assigning punishment. Across two experiments, participants first were paired with either a pro-social or anti-social target. Next, participants received either an ethics prime (Experiments 1 and 2) or a legality prime (Experiment 2) compared with a control prime (Experiments 1 and 2). Finally, participants reported their intentions to punish the target by taking money from him in an economic game (Experiment 1) or their behavioral intentions to punish the target (Experiment 2). We predicted and found that punishment assignment was greater for those participants who were paired with the anti-social target and activated the idea of justice-related concepts than for those who did not activate it.