This book concerns equality in personal status - absolute, anti-discrimination - and how formal protection was superseded by material, fuller protection.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.

The book sketches a broad landscape of sources of modern contract law, with particular regard to EU private law rules. It provides for a better understanding of the identity of present-day contract law by analysing the multitude of social and economic dynamics that shape its normative landscape.

The book offers an overview of the interactions between digital technologies and contract law, focusing largely on the two Proposals of the EU Commission of 2016 on digital contracting and digital contents.

A collection of essays by distinguished legal scholars that explores from legal, historical and theoretical perspectives how the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union has affected, and is likely to impact on the development of, contract law and commercial law within the European Union.