1 Title: The law as a dynamic interconnected system of states of affairs Short title: The law as a system of states of affairs Authors: JAAP HAGE AND BART VERHEIJ Postal address: Jaap Hage, Bart Verheij Department of Metajuridica Universiteit Maastricht P.O. Box 616 6200 MD Maastricht The Netherlands Email address: jaap.hage@metajur.unimaas.nl, bart.verheij@metajur.unimaas.nl World-Wide Web: http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/~verheij/ Note on formatting: The paper, especially the appendix, contains formulas with special formatting. To distinguish formulas from normal text a different font is used, as in the formula OCCURS(event). In formulas, the specific use of ordinary and italic characters is meaningful, as in OCCURS(event). Also the specific use of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, and small capitals is meaningful, as in Occurs(event), occurs(event), and OCCURS(event). Some ordinary set-theoretical symbols are used, as in State_of_affairs ∈ REPRESENTATION and STATES_OF_AFFAIRS ⊆ TERMS. The symbol ℘ in ℘(RULES) is an uppercase 'curly' P as used for denoting the power set of a set. Version: August 4, 1997