Matthew John Kane

Matthew John Kane was born to Anthony and Mary (Dunn) Kane of Niagara County, New York on November 28, 1863. He was the eldest of seven siblings. He graduated from Georgetown University in the class of 1886 with a law degree,[1][lower-alpha 1] Kane then went west to Wichita and to Harper, Kansas, before joining the Land Run of 1889 in Indian Territory. After the run, he settled in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and soon became chief deputy for Pat Nagle, the U.S. Marshal in Oklahoma.

Kane became a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, shortly before the granting of statehood.[2] He was also a delegate to the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists, in St. Louis, 1904.[3]

After Oklahoma officially became a state on November 16, 1907, Kane was one of the judges elected to the first session of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Jesse James Dunn was elected at the same time. Since both had the same seniority and would have represented the same judicial district, they agreed that Dunn should serve during the first term (1908-9) while Kane should serve during the second (1910–11). The issue was permanently resolved when Dunn resigned the seat in 1913 to move to California.

A brief summary of Justice Kane's life on the Oklahoma Supreme Court indicate that he established important precedents for the state in his arguments concerning taxation and the descent and distribution of Indian lands.[1]