Contributors
M. Scott Bradshaw is senior corporate counsel in private practice for major multinational corporations. He received a BA in 1986 and a JD in 1989, both from Brigham Young University, and received an MA in European Union Law in 2011 from King’s College of London. He has practiced law for thirteen years, including two years in the Moscow offices of Baker & McKenzie and a recent assignment in China. His practice focuses on issues concerning food and drug, international transactions, and compliance programs.
Joseph I. Bentley is a past international chair of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, chair of the Council for Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and is serving as a volume editor in the Legal and Business Records series of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He received his bachelor’s degree from BYU in 1965 and his JD degree from the University of Chicago in 1968. He joined the law firm of Latham and Watkins, where he practiced real estate law until 2003.
David W. Grua is a historian and curator at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. He has a PhD in American history, with specialties in the American West and Native America, from Texas Christian University. His publications have appeared in BYU Studies Quarterly, Mormon Historical Studies, Federal History, and other peer-reviewed venues.
James L. Kimball Jr. earned his BS in history from the University of Utah and master’s in history at the University of Iowa, where he wrote his thesis about the Nauvoo Charter. He taught in the Seminary and Institute programs of the LDS Church, including stints at West High (Salt Lake City), Oregon State University, and the University of Washington. He worked for the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than twenty-five years as a librarian, archivist, and supervisor of the Archives Search Room. He passed away August 26, 2012.
Gordon A. Madsen earned a BS in 1954 and JD in 1957 from the University of Utah. He has practiced as an assistant district attorney, Third Judicial District, Utah; assistant attorney general, Utah; served as a member Utah House of Representatives; in private law for fifty-six years; and is a senior coeditor for the Joseph Smith Papers Legal and Business Records series.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks is a graduate of Brigham Young University in 1954 and of the University of Chicago Law School in 1957. He practiced law and taught law in Chicago. He was president of Brigham Young University from 1971 to 1980 and a justice of the Utah Supreme Court from 1980 until his resignation in 1984, when he accepted a call as an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
David Keith Stott has practiced corporate law for four years at a private law firm in New York City and London. He specializes in mergers and acquisitions and capital markets. He graduated from the J. Reuben Clark Law School in 2009, where he was executive editor of the BYU Law Review.
Nathaniel Hinckley Wadsworth is an attorney at Rowley Chapman & Barney in Mesa, Arizona. He received a BA in 2003 from Brigham Young University and a JD in 2006 from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. For seven years he has been a commercial litigator.
Jeffrey N. Walker earned a BS from Western Michigan University in 1985 and a JD from Brigham Young University in 1988. He has practiced law for twenty-five years, mostly in Utah. He is series manager and a coeditor on the Joseph Smith Papers Legal and Business Records series and a member of the editorial board. He is also managing editor of Mormon Historical Studies and a trustee of the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation.
John W. Welch is the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in Greek and Latin at BYU and a JD at Duke University. He practiced in the tax department of O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. He is editor in chief of BYU Studies and is a consulting scholar on the Joseph Smith Papers Legal and Business Records series.
