[1] Bane earned a bachelor's degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Chicago in 1935 and was elected a Rhodes Scholar.
He later resigned from his post when the Chicago City Council refused to force police officers to disclose sources of income.
Bane also played a major role in the findings of the National Advisory Committee On Civil Disorder, or Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of 1967 national race riots, and chaired by Illinois governor Otto Kerner Jr.
When the Kerner Report, issued February 28, 1968, declared famously that "our nation is moving towards two societies, one Black, one White-separate and unequal", and that race riots could be traced to inadequate employment opportunities and substandard housing, Johnson was enraged.
On May 28, 1969, President Richard Nixon nominated Bane to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to replace Elmer Jacob Schnackenberg, who had died in September 1968.
With the IRS declining to back down from its position, Bane told the White House he would prefer to litigate the case.
[6][7] Finally, Bane, in a letter he sent to the president on June 30, 1969 requesting that his nomination be withdrawn, cited "pressing commitments" in his law firm and a growing need for him to remain there.
(Two of Nixon's Supreme Court nominees, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, both were rejected outright by the United States Senate in votes.)