Carla and I drove to Chapman University in Orange County today to hear this talk by Dallin Oaks, one of my professors at the University of Chicago School of Law. Here he is interviewed for the Church's website. We were also able to catch Elder Oak's post-speech interview on Hugh Hewitt's radio talk show.

Elder Oaks was a counselor in the Chicago South Stake presidency while I was a law student. He and his wife June often invited the students in the University Ward over for a Sunday afternoon dinner. One year, "President Oaks" and Joe Bentley, who was a year ahead of me, and I camped overnight in a tent in the state park in Nauvoo so Joe and Dallin could do some research at the county courthouse in Carthage. We ate dinner at a cafe in Nauvoo where they served the salad with a tasty blue-cheese dressing made right there in Nauvoo. The next day, after we had nearly given up searching, I happened to find the court records that Joe needed for his project on bankruptcy proceedings involving Joseph Smith. They were in a dusty, thin, unlabeled volume laying on its side on an upper shelf. Joe got xeroxed copies at the courthouse and gave me footnote credit in an article he later wrote for the BYU Law Review.

President Oaks was personable as a law professor; the law students liked him. At the time, he taught classes in Trusts and in Federal Estate and Gift Tax. When Carla and I visited Nauvoo with Ginger and Elliott a couple of years ago, the blue-cheese dressing was nowhere to be found. This Wikipedia entry on Nauvoo says: "In 2003 the Nauvoo Cheese company went out of business when it was purchased by a large food company and relocated to other facilities."