This book concerns equality in personal status - absolute, anti-discrimination - and how formal protection was superseded by material, fuller protection. It discusses history - Latin America, then the French Revolution - and disciplines - philosophy, ethics, economics, sociology, systems theory - with their diverse views and moves into modern phenomena like digitalization.

Jan Thiessen is Professor of Private Law, Contemporary and Commercial Legal History at Humboldt University. His main research interests in legal history focus on corporations, interferences between law and economic crises and law and lawyers in the context of national-socialist Germany. Stefan Grundmann is Professor of Private and Business Law and Legal Theory at Humboldt University and has published large treatises on European Company Law, Contract Law, Banking and Capital Market Law, New Private Law Theory.