Right, that's why I qualified both times with "observable". ~_^ It's worth noting that even if this capability can only occur due to methods on the subclass al

Right, that's why I qualified both times with "observable". ~_^ It's worth noting that even if this capability can only occur due to methods on the subclass alone, it can still fail LSP if those manipulations are still observable to a client using only the superclass. This is pretty much only possible because multiple clients can have a reference to the same object, since it allows one client to observably transition the object into a state that should be unreachable from the perspective of the second client. (This is the root of the need to make "defensive copies" [1].) If one imposes a strict single-ownership discipline, then it doesn't matter if super-interface properties can be violated by subclass-only methods, because for the duration of its use via its super-interface, those violations are impossible (and hence unobservable). [1] http://www.javapractices.com/topic/TopicAction.do?Id=15 http://www.javapractices.com/topic/TopicAction.do?Id=15