It is impossible to tell where the law stops and justice begins.

The line suggests that “law” (formal rules, procedures, and institutions) and “justice” (the moral aim those rules claim to serve) are so intertwined in practice that separating them cleanly is futile. It can be read as a critique of legal formalism: what counts as “justice” is often defined, limited, or even obscured by what the law permits and how it is applied. At the same time, it can imply a warning against simplistic moral judgments of legal outcomes—because legal decisions are produced through a mix of statutes, precedent, discretion, and social power, the boundary between lawful action and just action is contested and shifting. The aphorism captures the perennial tension between legality and legitimacy.