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1820–1975 · THE PETTY COURT OF THE PRAIRIE AND THE SUBURB
For a century and a half, the law seated inside Clay and Harris townships was a neighbor: the justice of the peace. Indiana's justices date to 1820 — constitutional officers, elected by each township, laymen as often as lawyers — and their courts were built for exactly the ground this section covers: countywide jurisdiction over petty crimes, small civil claims, and marriages, close enough to reach on foot and cheap enough to use without counsel. Beside the justice stood the township constable, who worked in tandem with the court — serving its summonses, executing its orders, and making its arrests. The constable who figures in the county's founding record above was appointed, in the county's first year; thereafter the office was elective, and the pair — justice and constable — were the entire resident law of the townships from their organization until deep into the automobile age. Everything graver than a petty offense left the ground: an examining hearing before the justice could bind a prisoner over, but the trial itself sat at the county seat.
The system died by referendum and statute, statewide, in the 1970s: a 1970 statewide vote removed the justice of the peace as a constitutional officer, and a state law of 1975 abolished the justice courts outright, their business passing to the county's courts at South Bend. No separate course for the two townships appears in the record reached — the abolition was a single state act, and it landed on Harris Prairie the day it landed everywhere. The constable's office, alone of the pair, survives in Indiana law as a township office; but the names of the men who held the justiceships and constableships of Clay and Harris townships across the office's long life were not preserved in any source this build could reach — neither county history prints a township officer roll — and the question whether either township's constable seat stands filled today is likewise unverified. Both items are carried as named gaps in the closing article, with the county clerk's canvasses and the townships' own records named as their settlers. What the record does support, it supports plainly: for most of this ground's history, its law was part-time, elected, and local to the section line — and the prairie's peace was kept, in the first instance, by men whose names the record has not kept.
Sources: Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Justices of the Peace" (the office 1820–1975; township election; the constables' tandem service; the 1970 referendum; the 1975 abolition law). Porter County Archives, "The Porter County Peacemakers" (the justice courts' jurisdiction over petty crimes, small civil cases, marriages and later traffic matters; constables serving summons and enforcing the courts' orders). The search record of this section for township officer rolls: Chapman (1880) and Howard (1907), read whole — no Clay or Harris officer roll printed in either.