Michael S. Kanne had been out of law school only four years when he began a career on the bench that lasted five decades.Kanne sat on an Indiana trial court for nearly a decade before he was tapped to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. He was elevated to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a little more than five years after that.During the next 35 years as an appellate judge, Kanne grappled with cases touching on such matters as abortion, employment practices, sexual …