Selbstbestimmte Identität

When individuals invoke their identity in court, they seek to strengthen their claims - but what does "identity" mean in legal terms? This study explores why and how law ascribes identity to individuals, arguing that the concept becomes theoretically coherent only within anti-discrimination law. Examining the categories of gender , religion , and disability , it shows that the law treats identity as both mutable and immutable. Drawing on case law from gender registration, health and social insurance claims of transgender persons, recognition of queer and religious refugees, constitutional protection of religion, and disability rights, the author uncovers a fundamental contradiction: the very categories meant to protect individuals also define and limit them. Through an immanent critique and a systematic dialogue with Hegel's theory of freedom and "second nature", the study conceptualises identity as both contradiction and form of freedom. Legal identity, understood in this dialectical sense, is the condition for self-determination within liberal anti-discrimination law. The author concludes that only a dynamic-yet not arbitrary-treatment of legal categories can sustain freedom without dissolving its normative coherence.