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Dallin H. Oaks
Oaks is a lawyer by temperament as well as training: precise, deliberate and focused on institutions, rules and religious freedom. He moved from a distinguished legal career into more than four decades of apostolic service and now leads the Church.
Personality
Oaks approaches questions the way a judge would: carefully, with attention to precedent, structure and the limits of authority. As president of Brigham Young University he preferred delegating authority to deans and department heads and kept a hands-off approach to student discipline, and he was regarded as a moderate who tried to keep partisan politics off campus. He is candid about his own limits; after six years at BYU he wrote to Church leaders that he had become worn out and suggested fixed terms for university presidents. The Church describes him as a firm defender of truth and an advocate for religious freedom.
Under pressure
His father died of tuberculosis when Oaks was seven, and for a time he lived with grandparents while his mother recovered and later pursued graduate study. In 1969, chairing disciplinary hearings for students who had occupied a University of Chicago building, he was physically attacked twice but completed the process. At BYU he held his ground in disputes with the federal government and in a standoff with senior Church leaders over a faculty appointment, a conflict the press linked to his release. He was widowed in 1998, when his first wife died of cancer, and remarried in 2000.
The arc
Born in Provo in 1932, Oaks studied accounting at BYU, edited the University of Chicago Law Review and clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren. He practised at Kirkland & Ellis, taught law at Chicago, led BYU from 1971 to 1980 and sat on the Utah Supreme Court until 1984, when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He was twice considered for the U.S. Supreme Court. After serving as First Counselor to Russell M. Nelson from 2018, he became Church President in October 2025, and in September 2026 spoke at Washington National Cathedral on the Constitution and peacemaking.
Legacy
Oaks has been one of the most influential Latter-day Saint leaders of his era, particularly as the Church's leading voice on religious liberty. He testified to Congress on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1992 and has promoted 'fairness for all' approaches, holding up Utah's 2015 legislative compromise as a model that gave each side significant benefits. In 2018 he said publicly that no explanation he had studied for the former priesthood restriction satisfied him as inspired, and in 2020 he denounced racism in general conference. Historians have predicted that his presidency will build on trends already in motion rather than change direction.
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