
The Justice League operates out of a headquarters. While sometimes the League is shown to have a designated chairperson or leader, there is otherwise generally no formal hierarchy within the team they are a small band of equals who make major decisions, such as inducting new members, by vote. The cast is rarely more than a dozen people in size so as to give a reasonable and equal time for each character. Particularly in the early decades of publication, DC Comics was keen for its superheroes to be perceived as law-abiding because children were the main audience. The Justice League is an independent group, although it usually accepts some constraints from the US government or the United Nations so as to receive their sanction. This was done to emulate the model of Marvel Comics' X-Men books, whose stories were more character-driven and which favored more obscure or even new characters. The advantage of this was that lesser-known characters are not burdened by convoluted continuities, which gives writers more creative flexibility to write character-driven stories. DC Comics has in several periods deviated from this formula, most notably in the late 1980s and early 1990s with books such as Justice League International, which deliberately featured a cast of lesser-known characters. Most versions of the Justice League feature a select cast of highly popular characters from the DC Comics portfolio, such as Superman and Batman, to attract readers with their star power and they often co-feature a few lesser-known characters who benefit from exposure, such as Cyborg or Black Canary. This is in contrast to teams such as the X-Men or the Fantastic Four, who normally operate as a team and for whom the team is central to their identity.

The members of the Justice League are heroes who normally operate independently but who occasionally team up to tackle especially formidable villains. Main article: List of Justice League members

Diegetically, these superheroes usually operate independently but occasionally assemble as a team to tackle especially formidable villains. The Justice League is an all-star ensemble cast of established superhero characters from DC Comics' portfolio. The team was conceived by writer Gardner Fox as a revival of the Justice Society of America, a similar team from DC Comics from the 1940s which had been pulled out of print due to a decline in sales. The team first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #28 (March 1960). The Justice League is a team of superheroes in American comic books published by DC Comics. The seven original members of the Justice League: Green Lantern, Flash, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter.
