During the decade of 1860 Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield drafted the Civil Code for the Argentine Republic. It established civil equality for all inhabitants of the country. As an example of codification, the project received criticism about its implications and relevance. These comments, which involved both legal and political arguments, made assiduous use of the concept of equality, as well as other related concepts. The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of these uses and attempt to show the current conceptions and ways in which the concept of equality has been made operational in liberal language.