Charter

A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the recipient admits a limited (or inferior) status within the relationship, and it is within that sense that charters were historically granted, and that sense is retained in modern usage of the term.

The word entered the English language from the Old French charte (ultimately from the Latin word for "paper"). It has come to be synonymous with the document that lays out the granting of rights or privileges.

The term is used for a special case (or as an exception) to an institutional charter. A charter school, for example, is one that has different rules, regulations, and statutes from a state school.

Charter is sometimes used as a synonym for "tool" or "lease", as in the "charter"' of a bus or boat or plane by an organization, intended for a similar group destination.

A charter member of an organization is an original member; that is, one who became a member when the organization received its charter.

Anglo-Saxon Charters are documents from the early medieval period in Britain which typically make a grant of land or record a privilege. They are usually written on parchment, in Latin but often with sections in the vernacular, describing the bounds of estates, which often correspond closely to modern parish boundaries. The earliest surviving charters were drawn up in the 670s; the oldest surviving charters granted land to the Church, but from the 8th century surviving charters were increasingly used to grant land to lay people.

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