Equality has been seen as the core of any quest of justice since Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics. Reaching not only situational equality, but equality in status, however, had not been achieved until modern times. The father of ethics and his systematic enquiry into the concept of justice did not have any problems with foreigners without rights, women as second-class citizens and enslaving people - nor did antiquity at large, medieval era or even the high renaissance. While suum cuique (treating equal issues equally and unequal issues unequally) had been in place since antiquity and Cicero, personal status still had to wait to be recognised as a target of equality concerns. Related to this, no agenda was designed for achieving a paradigm reaching beyond mere formal equality, which only implies treating same things formally the same, and the material quest for equality has come to the fore as a vision only very recently. This book explores these issues - from general equality to equality also in personal status, hence also anti-discrimination, and the change from formal to material concepts of equality - in time and in theoretical approaches. In time, it describes firstly how the equality of indigenous people in Latin America was originally developed as a postulate on the basis of the Bible (all men are similar to God) and from that also as a postulate of equality in law.

The book provides a broad and topical perspective of the sources of modern contract law. It examines the creation of contract law as a multi-pronged occurrence that involves diverse types of normative content and various actors. The book encompasses both a classical perspective on contract law as a state-created edifice and also delves into the setting of contractual rules by non-state actors. In so doing, the volume thoroughly analyses present-day developments to make sense of shifting attitudes towards the overall regulatory paradigm of contract law and those that reshape the classic view of the sources of contract law. The latter concerns, in particular, the digitalisation of markets and growing trends towards granularisation and personalisation of rules. The book builds on the EU private law perspective as its primary point of reference. At the same time, its reach goes far beyond this domain to include in-depth analysis from the vantage points of general contract theory and comparative analysis. In so doing, it pays particular attention to theoretical foundations of sources of contract law and values that underpin them. By adopting such diversified perspectives, the book attempts to provide for a better understanding of the nature and functions of present-day contract law by capturing the multitude of social and economic dynamics that shape its normative landscape. The volume gathers a unique and distinguished group of contributors from the EU, USA and Israel. They bring research experience from various areas of private law and contribute with diverse conceptual perspectives. Stefan Grundmann is Professor of Transnational Law and Theory at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, and Professor of Private and Business Law at Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany. Mateusz Grochowski is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg, Germany, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, and Fellow at the Information Society Project, Yale Law School, United States.

European Contract Law in the Digital Age offers an overview of the interactions between digital technologies and contract law and takes into account the two (late) 2015 EU Commission proposals on digital contracting and digital content. The book goes beyond these proposals and is grouped around the three pillars of an architecture of contract law in the digital age: the regulatory framework; digital interventions over the life-cycle of the contract; and digital objects of contracting. The discussion of the regulatory framework looks at the platforms used for digital contracting - such as Airbnb - which are particularly important instruments for the formation of digital contracts. In describing the life-cycle of the contract, this book shows how four key technologies (digital platforms, Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence, and blockchain) are being used at different stages of the contractual process, from the screening for contractual partners to formation, enforcement and interpretation. Furthermore, digitally facilitated contracting increasingly relates to digital content - for instance software or search engines - as the object of the contract but while this area has notably been shaped by the proposed Directive on Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content, this work shows that important questions remain unanswered. This book highlights how the digital dimension opens a new chapter in the concept of contracting, both questioning and revisiting many of its core concepts. It is a reliable resource on topical developments for everyone interested in digital technologies and contract law. Stefan Grundmann is Professor of European Private Law, Transnational Law and Legal Theory at Humboldt University, Berlin and the European University Institute, Florence. He has written books and commentaries in several languages in contract law, banking law and company law, as well as in private law theory. He is President of the Society of European Contract Law.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent to which the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union will influence the development of contract and commercial law at a European level. The essays in this volume examine how the Court of Justice has already used the Charter to steer the law governing consumer transactions, financial contracts, contracts of employment, self-employment, tenancies, and other contractual arrangements. They then proceed to assess the likely future impact of the Charter on EU contract law, using a variety of legal, historical, and theoretical perspectives. These original assessments by distinguished scholars range from claims that the Charter will only have a mild indirect influence to arguments that the Charter provides the necessary legal foundations for EU contract law and for a market society within a multi-level system of governance. Questions are raised about the scope of application of the Charter; its indirect but significant effect on national legal systems, especially in improving the effectiveness of EU law; and whether the rights and principles of the Charter may sometimes have direct effect on contracts by leading a court to disapply national law. Hugh Collins FBA is the Vinerian Professor of English Law, All Souls College, Oxford. 2 Intersentia Intersentia 3

In its case law the Court of Justice of the European Union has acknowledged general principles of EU law, which have a constitutional status. In addition the Court of Justice has also recognised 'general principles of civil law', relying upon values which are traditionally rooted in the domain of private law. The pervasive use of principles, both in the case law of the Court of Justice and in other EU projects of 'soft ' and 'hard' law, challenges legal scholarship. Although the concepts of principles and rules have been widely discussed within the context of national legal orders, they need to be rethought at the European level, because the traditional view of a principle does not fit the European Union's constitutional architecture. This also applies to the general principles of civil law, for instance good faith. They also have to be redefined to be consistent with the European Union's legal order.The contributions in this book examine EU general principles and their distinction from rules both within the context of the European Union as well as of the Member States. Moreover, they focus on the relevance of EU general principles for contract law and of principles of civil law for a European contract law