Our Divinely Inspired Constitution

Elder Oaks, speaking on the
importance of the US Constitution

The US Constitution holds great importance to Latter-Day Saints.  One influential speaker and leader is Apostle, Elder Dallin H. Oaks.  I have excerpted the following on his background:

For more than a half century, Elder Oaks has been a participant in or a knowledgeable observer of the operation of constitutions. Just after his graduation from law school, he worked behind the closed doors of the United States Supreme Court as a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren. Later, he taught law at three major law schools: the Universities of Chicago, Michigan, and Brigham Young.

Elder Oaks practiced law and worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney in the criminal courts of Chicago. He argued criminal cases in the appellate courts of Illinois. He published many articles and several books involving the interpretation of constitutions. He was the legal counsel to the Bill of Rights Committee of the Illinois Constitutional Convention, which drafted the only state constitution successfully written and adopted in the last 100 years.

Here in Utah, of course, he served as a justice of the Utah Supreme Court for three and a half years. Thus, he has had many years of hands-on experience in interpreting the United States Constitution and the constitutions of two different states — Illinois and Utah.  http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/constitution-day-introduction-of-elder-dallin-h-oaks

In 1992 he spoke on the divinely inspired nature of the Constitution from an LDS perspective:  http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?locale=0&sourceId=729d94bf3938b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

This last Friday (9/17/10), on Constitution day, Elder Oaks spoke again on the importance of the Constitution and a few of the modern issues facing it:  http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/-fundamentals-of-our-constitutions-elder-dallin-h-oaks#_ftn3

I highly recommend both articles to you.