Great question. "Legal system" is about the letter of the law. Which means that written law has to be precise in dictating exact steps. Failure to adhere to th

Great question. "Legal system" is about the letter of the law. Which means that written law has to be precise in dictating exact steps. Failure to adhere to those steps is automatically non-abiding. "Justice system" is about the spirit of the law. Which means that written law is a guideline for judges to use, often strictly. However, judges have room and freedom to make decisions based on individual cases and circumstances. A simple example is alimony. In most states in the US, the spouse making more income the last year is supposed to maintain alimony payments to the spouse with lesser income, often for an unduly long duration. This is letter of the law. In this letter of the law, it missed circumstances that led to one spouse having higher income. An example is, maybe one spouse was a student with paltry income last year. If they get divorced now, letter of law dictates that the current spouse making higher income pays alimony. But maybe in 2 years from the divorce the student graduates and earns $300k a year because they were studying neuroscience. This is not entertained in letter of the law (unless the law is changed with specific handling of all such cases, which is infinite) No exceptions and circumstances are entertained and following letter of the law yields just one kind of result. This often leads to patchwork laws where amendments are appended constantly trying to cover every corner case as an after thought. In a justice system, the judge takes circumstances into account. For instance, in the above example, the judge could allow only 2 years of alimony payment. An example of this is in Singapore. Try to read it with not a letter-of-the-law eyes and you'll see that the Judge has the ability to make independent decisions: https://blog.moneysmart.sg/family/divorce-ex-wife-money/ https://blog.moneysmart.sg/family/divorce-ex-wife-money/ No country has a perfect justice system but the difference in approach defines how the society will ultimately be like to live in.