BAILIFF, in English law, is a legal officer, and may be described as the keeper, protector, or superintendent of some duty or charge legally imposed on him. As officers of the law, bailiffs put in force arresting process, and they perform other duties within the county or bailiwick required of them by the sheriff, who is their immediate official superior. In this sense bailiffs are either bailiffs of hundreds or bound bailiffs. The duty of the former is to collect fines, summon juries, attend the judges and justices at the assizes and quarter-sessions, and execute writs and processes in the several hundreds. Bound bailiffs, again, are officers usually joined by the sheriffs with the bailiffs of hundreds, and employed on account of their adroitness and dexterity. They are called bound bailiffs because, the sheriff being civilly responsible for their official misdemeanours, they are annually bound in an obligation, with sureties, for the due execution of their office. There are also special bailiffs, who are officers appointed by the sheriff on the application of the party suing out the process to be executed; and whenever a party thus chooses his own officers, he is considered to discharge the sheriff from all responsibility for what is done by him. There is, besides, another exceptional class of bailiffs, called bailiffs of liberties, honours, manors, and other lordships and franchises, whose appointments, duties, and responsibilities are regulated by the 7 Vict. chap. 19. The high bailiff of a county court is a permanent officer under whose directions the process of the court is executed by sub-bailiffs. The office of high bailiff is usually combined with that of the registrar.
The sheriff himself is the Queen's bailiff, and, as such, it is his business to preserve the rights of the crown within his bailiwick. He must seize to the sovereign's use all lands devolved to the crown by attainder or escheat; must levy all fines and forfeitures; and must seize and keep all Waifs (q.v.), wrecks, estrays, and the like, unless they be granted to some subject.
In the United States, the term bailiff is seldom used except sometimes to designate a sheriff's deputy or constable, or a party liable to account to another for the rents and profits of real estate; as in some cases a tenant in common who receives more than his share. The duties of a bailiff are performed in America by a deputy-sheriff, constable, or tipstaff, who are officers acting under the orders of the sheriff or magistrate, or under the immediate supervision of the court.