Whether someone has said it to you intentionally or you have heard the term through osmosis, you have likely heard the term “process servers” before. However, the real question is, does anyone outside of the legal profession really know or need to know what exactly process servers are, what they do, and why they do it?
Process Serving: A History
In the Constitution of the United States of America, there is a special section that deals with due process of law, or the legal requirement of a state to respect all of the legal rights of a citizen, which namely means every person has the right to be summoned to court, usually by written notice. Originally, people were handed these notices to court by their town sheriff, but as the country expanded, the need arose for a better, timelier legal delivery system and so the profession of process servers came in to being.
The Business of Process Serving
Process servers perform a number of tasks in the legal field including court document filing and retrieval, but most importantly, the delivery or “serving” of documents to persons involved in court cases such as subpoenas, writs, or summons. Once the documents are served, verification called “an affidavit of service” has to be notarized and given to the person or company who has been served.
Great Importance
Process servers are very important jobs for many reasons, and not only because of the need for them to help uphold the Constitution. Another important reason is the function that they serve within society: just think of what might happen without their civil services to our local and national judicial systems—if documents are not served on the right people, the court cannot function properly and most, if not all, cases would be thrown out for being improperly served. It would result in complete and utter legal anarchy.
