[jacques_chester]

Sure, that's one source of complexity in legislation.

But really, seriously, the world is complex. Every day people stumble on combinations of circumstances that have never occurred before in human history. Some fraction of those people get into an argument about what happens next. Some fraction of those go to a judge and ask her what the answer is.

The judge takes the existing principles, cogitates a bit, then extends the case law to cover the new scenario based on analogy with older scenarios.

This creates a new piece of law. It's never been seen before. But it might turn out to have profound consequences.

Before switching to computer science, I studied law. It's complicated because people are complicated.