Court officer

A bailiff (from Middle English baillif, Old French baillis, bail "custody, charge, office"; cf. bail, based on the adjectival form, baiulivus, of Latin bajulus, carrier, manager) is a manager, overseer or custodian; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. Bailiffs are of various kinds and their offices and duties vary greatly.

Another official sometimes referred to as a bailiff was the vogt: see Vogt and Vogt (Switzerland). In the Holy Roman Empire a similar function was performed by the Amtmann.

Bailiff was the term used by the Normans for what the Saxons had called a reeve: the officer responsible for executing the decisions of a court. The duty of the bailiff would thus include serving summonses and orders, and executing all warrants issued out of the corresponding court. The district within which the bailiff operated was called his bailiwick, even to the present day. Bailiffs were outsiders and free men, that is, they were not usually from the bailiwick they were responsible for.

Throughout Norman England, the Saxon and Norman populations gradually mixed, and reeve came to be limited to shire-level courts (hence sheriff as a contraction of "shire-reeve"), while bailiff was used in relation to the lower courts. Primarily then, bailiff referred to the officer executing the decisions of manorial courts, and the hundred courts. Likewise, in Scotland a bailie was the chief officer of a barony (baron bailie), and in the Channel Islands they were the principal civil officers. With the introduction of Justices of the Peace (magistrates), magistrates' courts acquired their own bailiffs.

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