Up to now, there has never been a legal approach that indicates in a historical context which rights and duties the Dutch nobility had en still has to a lesser degree. This research fills this gap. When the class society was abolished in 1848, the constitutional meaning of hereditary nobility came to an end. And yet, the archaic inheritance system, that only follows the male family line, continue as a kind of refined right to a name, without conflicting with civil rights that were protected in the constitution and international treaties. In 1983, the institute of nobility entirely disappears from the constitution. The consequence is that in other countries of the kingdom (such as Curacao and Saint Martin) another application of the nobility law appears possible. This legal imperfection can only be rectified by still incorporating nobility in the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in which also knighthood is explicitly mentioned.