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Dallin Harris Oaks (born August 12, 1932) is an American religious leader and former jurist who is the eighteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He served as the first counselor in the church's First Presidency from 2018 to 2025. He was called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984.

Oaks was born in Provo, Utah, and grew up in Provo and Vernal, Utah. He studied accounting at Brigham Young University (BYU), then attended law school at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. After graduating in 1957, Oaks was a law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court, then spent three years in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis before returning to the University of Chicago as a professor of law. In 1971, Oaks succeeded Ernest L. Wilkinson as the president of BYU. He held the position until 1980, when he was appointed to be a justice of the Utah Supreme Court. He served on the court until his selection to the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984.

During his professional career, Oaks was twice considered by the president of the United States for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court: first in 1975 by Gerald Ford, who ultimately nominated John Paul Stevens, and again in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, who ultimately nominated Sandra Day O'Connor.

Early life

Oaks was born on August 12, 1932, in Provo, Utah, to Stella (née Harris) and Lloyd Edress Oaks. Through his mother, he is a second great-grandnephew to Martin Harris, one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. His given name, Dallin, honors Utah artist Cyrus Dallin. Oaks's mother had attended Cyrus Dallin's unveiling of The Pioneer Mother in Springville, Utah in July 1932 and "decided then and there to name her first child after the artist—'providing it was a son.'" Between ages two and eight, Oaks and his family lived in Twin Falls, Idaho.

In 1940, when Oaks was seven years old, his father died of tuberculosis at age thirty-seven. After her husband's death, Stella suffered an episode of mental illness and was unable to attend school and work for a time. During this time, Oaks and his two younger siblings resided with their maternal grandparents in Payson, Utah. The loss of his father and the temporary loss of his mother caused him to have difficulties concentrating in school. When he was about nine or ten years old, he resumed living with his mother, who had taken a position as a teacher in Vernal, Utah. Stella Oaks eventually pursued a graduate degree at Columbia University and later served as head of adult education for the Provo School District. In 1956, she became the first woman to sit on the Provo City Council, where she served for two terms. In 1958, she also briefly served as Provo's assistant mayor.

From about age ten to sixteen, Oaks and his younger brother and sister spent the school year in Vernal, Utah, and the summer in Payson, Utah, with their maternal grandparents while their mother Stella pursued her graduate degree at Columbia. During the school year, Stella was a high school teacher in Vernal. Oaks obtained his first job at the age of twelve at a radio repair shop in Vernal sweeping the floors. He later worked as an engineer and announcer for stations in both Vernal (KJAM) and Provo (KCSU). He obtained his first-class radio operator license in the spring of 1948. Oaks was involved in Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout at age fourteen.

During his first two years of high school, Oaks attended Uintah High School in Vernal, where he was a member of the school's football and debate teams and played oboe in the school band. At the start of his eleventh-grade year, the family moved to Provo, where Oaks chose to attend Brigham Young High School (B.Y. High) because it was smaller than Provo High School. At B.Y. High, he was again involved in football, track, and dramatic productions and played the oboe in the band. Oaks graduated from B.Y. High in 1950.

Education

After graduating from high school, Oaks enrolled at BYU, where he studied accounting. Due to his service in the Utah National Guard and the possibility of being called up to serve in the Korean War, he did not serve a mission for the LDS Church. As a college student, he occasionally served as a radio announcer for local high school basketball games. At a game during his freshman year, he met June Dixon, a senior at one of the high schools. They dated for two years before marrying in 1952 in the Salt Lake Temple.

Oaks graduated from BYU in 1954 with a bachelor's degree with high honors. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School on a full-tuition National Honor Scholarship, where he was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. He graduated in 1957 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.

Career

After law school, Oaks was a law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1957 to 1958. He then entered private practice at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in corporate litigation. Oaks had worked with this firm twice before, first during a summer in law school and then for a few months before he began his clerkship with Chief Justice Warren. When Oaks began at Kirkland & Ellis, he worked under Robert Bork, but he was quickly appointed as one of the firm's principal lawyers. He worked primarily on cases for clients Standard Oil of Indiana, B. F. Goodrich and Chemetron Corporation, but also assisted with cases for several other companies. Initially, the Oaks family lived in the western suburbs of Chicago, but in 1960, they purchased a home in Elmhurst, Illinois. According to historian Lavina Fielding Anderson, Oaks was the first lawyer from Kirkland & Ellis to represent an indigent party before the Illinois Supreme Court. This case was also the first time Oaks argued a case before an appellate court.

In 1961, Oaks left Kirkland & Ellis and became a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1962, only six months later, he became associate dean of the school when dean Edward H. Levi was named provost of the university. As a professor, Rex E. Lee was among the students for whom he sought to obtain Supreme Court clerkships. As a faculty member, Oaks taught primarily in the fields of trust and estate law, as well as gift taxation law. He worked with George Bogert on a new edition of a casebook on trusts. In 1963, Oaks edited a book entitled The Wall Between Church and State covering discussions on views on the relationship of the government and religion in the law and the aptness of that metaphor. He wrote an article on the school prayer cases aimed at a lay audience that was published in the LDS Church's Improvement Era in December 1963. He also wrote on issues of evidence exclusion and the Fourth Amendment. He was opposed to the exclusionary rule and favored prosecution in "victim-less crimes." In the summer of 1964, he served as assistant state's attorney for Cook County, Illinois. In the fall of 1964, Oaks was appointed a full professor at the University of Chicago law school. While at the University of Chicago, Oaks was the faculty advisor to the legal aid clinic at that institution. He also worked to find ways to address the root issues facing the poor. He felt that federal anti-poverty programs of the time focused too much on symptoms and not enough on causes. Oaks served as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School during the summer of 1968. In 1966, he became a founding member of the editorial board of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought; he resigned from the journal in early 1970.

In 1969, Oaks served as chairman of the University of Chicago disciplinary committee. In conducting hearings against the 160 students who had been involved in a sit-in at the administration building, Oaks was physically attacked twice. Over 100 students were eventually either suspended or…