estate

estate 1 In property law, see property ; tenure . 2 In constitutional law, an estate denotes an organized class of society with a separate voice in government. Representation by estate arose in Europe in the 13th cent. when the feudal system was being broken up as a result of the growth of the towns. The term generally designates three classes—the nobility, the clergy, and the commons. The commons were the knights and the townspeople of substance—the burgesses or bourgeoisie. The sovereign would occasionally consult the three estates and consider their grievances. Often voting was by an estate as a whole rather than by individual vote. In many cases the estates might merely advise the sovereign, and their decisions were not binding. From these practices modern parliamentary institutions gradually evolved in several countries. Much of the constitutional development of the later Middle Ages is a record of the emergence of the commons—sometimes called the third estate—into a position of equality with the other two estates. The process is clearly shown in the history of the States-General in France. The next step was the transition from representation by estates to popular representation. A crucial moment in the French Revolution was the rejection of voting according to estates and the merger of the States-General into the national assembly . The English Parliament may be viewed historically as a representative body of the estates; the nobility and the Church of England are represented by the House of Lords, and the commons—the remaining adult citizens—by the House of Commons. In fact, however, the term estate is not applicable to a country with democratic institutions and is probably not appropriate in any modern state.

estate A social stratum to which are attached specific rights and duties sustained by the force of legal sanction. The most obvious examples are the peasants, serfs, burghers, clergy, and nobility of the post-feudal states of continental Europe. For example, early-modern France distinguished the nobles, clergy, and the ‘Third Estate’ until the late eighteenth century. The term is often (though controversially) applied to the system of stratification in feudal Europe, since feudal strata were characterized more by personal bonds of vassalage, rather than shared political rights and obligations. It should be noted, for example, that the distinguished historian of feudalism Marc Bloch refers to the strata of the feudal order as ‘classes’.

Estate systems of stratification are rigid in their prescription of economic duties, political rights, and social convention, although typically they are not closed to social mobility. Unlike in caste systems, the estate does not necessarily renew itself from within: the clergy in pre-revolutionary France, for example, was an ‘open estate’.

Sociological usage of the term dates back to Ferdinand Tönnies's distinction between estates and classes (or ‘communal’ and ‘societal’ collectivities). In Economy and Society (1922) Max Weber cites the estates of medieval Europe as paradigmatic examples of status groups. In the same vein, T. H. Marshall defined an estate as ‘a group of people having the same status, in the sense in which that word is used by lawyers. A status in this sense is a position to which is attached a bundle of rights and duties, privileges and obligations, legal capacities or incapacities, which are publicly recognized and which can be defined and enforced by public authority and in many cases by courts of law’ (‘The Nature and Determinants of Social Status’, in Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, 1964
). However, like most of the other main sociological concepts for studying systems of stratification, that of estate is a matter of some dispute.

estate (arch.) condition, status XIII; outward pomp XIV; class of the body politic; interest in property XV; property, possessions XVI; landed property XVIII. Early forms (a)estat, astat(e) — OF. estat (mod. état) — L. status, f. stat-, pp. stem of -stāre STAND. Cf. STATE.