Background
Charles Shuster Zane was born in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States.
Charles Shuster Zane was born in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States.
On March 2, 1831. He moved to Sangamon County, Illinois in the 1850s and worked on a farm before going to school at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. After graduating, he taught school around the state. Zane went to Springfield, Illinois in July 1856.
He was admitted to practice law 1857.
He was elected city attorney in 1858, 1860, and 1865. He applied to study law at Abraham Lincoln"s firm, but was turned down.
Zane later partnered with Shelby M. Cullom, until elected Illinois" Fifth Circuit judge, a post he filled from 1875 to 1883. Republican President Chester A. Arthur appointed Zane chief justice of the Utah Territory Supreme Court in 1884.
He had been nominated by Senator Cullom.
Zane arrived in August 1884, and was assigned to the Third Judicial District (Salt Lake City), as well as his Supreme Court post. Zane convicted hundreds of people for illegal cohabitation or polygamy. Senator. George Edmunds of Vermont, a leading critic of polygamy, pushed a bill in 1882 that disenfranchised polygamists and called for an electoral commission to supervise Utah elections.
Zane continued his prosecutions until July 1888, when the more lenient Elliott Sandford replaced him on the high court.
In May 1889, Zane was returned to the bench by President Benjamin Harrison and resumed polygamy prosecutions. When his term ended in 1893 he remained in Utah.
He was one of the first three justices elected to the Utah State Supreme Court, serving from 1896 to 1899. Thomas G. Alexander, " Zane, Apostle of the New Era," Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (1966).
Salt Lake Tribune, November 4, 1884.