Dallin H. Oaks, ’57, a who served as a member of the Law School faculty for a decade, has been named the 18th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The announcement was made Tuesday, following the passing of President Russell M. Nelson on September 27.

As a student at the Law School, Oaks served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. He subsequently served as a clerk for US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, and then spent three years in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in corporate litigation, before returning to the Law School as a professor in 1961. 

In his decade on the Law School faculty, Oaks taught classes such as criminal procedure, wills and trusts, estate and gift tax, and American legal history. His legal research focused on the criminal justice system. He also served as the faculty advisor to the Law School’s legal aid clinic

Oaks left the Law School in 1971 to become president of Brigham Young University. He left BYU in 1981 after he was appointed a justice on the Utah Supreme Court,  where he served until his 1984 appointment to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the LDS Church’s governing bodies.

In 2012, the Law School’s Federalist Society presented Oaks with its Lee Lieberman Otis Award for Distinguished Service to honor his years of dedicated public service.

Oaks was also the inspiration for the Dallin H. Oaks Society at the Law School, whose mission is “to increase awareness within the Law School community of the presence, beliefs and concerns of law students who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Oaks’s new role as president follows the church’s longstanding practice of succession by seniority within the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In this position, he oversees a global faith community of more than 17 million members.