Charles Eugene Otis was born on May 11, 1846, on a farm in Prairieville Township, Barry County, Michigan. He was the son of Isaac Otis, a descendant of John Otis who emigrated from England about 1631 and settled in Hingham, Massachussets, and of Caroline Abigail (Curtiss) Otis.
Charles Otis attended Prairie Seminary at Richland, the Kalamazoo high school, and the University of Michigan, where he received the degree of A. B. in 1869.
After teaching school for two years he went to St. Paul and read law with his brother, George L. Otis, a leading member of the Minnesota bar, entering into partnership with him as soon as he was admitted to practice, in 1873. This firm lasted until 1883 when, upon the death of George L. Otis, a younger brother, Arthur G. , was associated with the survivor. An avowed Democrat, Otis was appointed judge of the second district of Minnesota in 1889 by the Republican governor, William R. Merriam, to fill a vacancy. At the general election of 1890 he was nominated by both parties, but in 1896, since he had repudiated the Chicago platform, his own party refused to renominate him. The Republicans supported him, however, and he was elected for another term. Declining a third nomination, in 1903 he resumed the practice of law in partnership with his son, James C. Otis, and these two, a little later, brought into the firm Willis C. Otis, a nephew of the elder member. This organization persisted down to 1917; at that time Willis went into the army, and a new partner, Kenneth G. Brill, was admitted, the firm name becoming Otis & Brill.
In 1904 Otis was a candidate for chief justice of the supreme court of the state but, along with the rest of his party, went down to defeat before the Roosevelt landslide. Always interested in civic matters, he was an alderman of St. Paul from 1880 to 1883 and a member of the library board from 1896 to 1899. As judge, many parties were willing to place their cases in his hands to hear and decide. He sustained the validity of the so-called "Bell Charter" of St. Paul, a new organic law passed in 1891, which did much to secure a more economical and less corrupt government for the city.
Otis’ principal claim to remembrance, however, comes from his having been appointed, with the consent of all parties, by Judge Walter H. Sanborn of the Eighth United States Circuit Court to take testimony, hear arguments, and report findings of fact and "conclusions of law, together with the forms of decrees which he recommended to be entered, in the nine Minnesota railroad rate cases. " The work of taking testimony and hearing arguments lasted from June 2, 1908, to May 26, 1910, and Otis' report as master in chancery was submitted June 29, 1910. His findings and conclusions as to the three roads which were taken for test cases were approved by Judge Sanborn, who rendered a decision in favor of the complainants (the stockholders). These had sought by injunction to prevent the railroad officials from complying with the Minnesota law, on the grounds that the law operated to interfere with interstate commerce, over which Congress and not the state has jurisdiction, and that the prescribed rates were confiscatory, hence in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
When the case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal, that court, speaking through Justice Hughes, reversed the decision on the first point, holding that since Congress had not dealt with this phase of intrastate commerce, the field was open to state action. As to the second point, that the rates were confiscatory, the lower court was sustained as to one railroad, the Minneapolis & St. Louis, but not in the case of the more important ones, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern. His death occurred in St. Paul.
Charles Otis was a member of the library board (1896-1899).
The testimony of his associates both during his lifetime and after his death supports the statement indorsed by the bar association that Otis "was a man of the highest character and ability, a patriotic citizen and an honest, able and fearless judge. "
On September 3, 1874, Charles Otis married Elizabeth Noyes Ransom; they had three children.
