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Carlos A. Ball

Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar

Professor Ball received his B.A. summa cum laude from Tufts University, his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Kent Scholar and the book reviews editor of the Columbia Law Review, and his LL.M. from Cambridge University, where he was awarded a “First.” He clerked for Chief Justice Paul Liacos of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and worked as a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society in New York City in the early 1990s. He joined the law school in 2008 after teaching at the University of Illinois College of Law for eight years and at the Penn State University School of Law for five. 

Professor Ball is currently writing a book on the history of litigation involving LGBT parents. He is the author of From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Cases that Have Changed Our Nation (Beacon, 2010) and of The Morality of Gay Rights: An Exploration in Political Philosophy (Routledge, 2003). He is also a co-author of Cases and Materials on Sexual Orientation and the Law (West, 2008).

Other writings include “Against Neutrality in the Legal Recognition of Intimate Relationships,” in Moral Argument, Sexual Minorities, and the Public Good: Advancing the Debate (Gordon Babst, et al., eds.) (Lexington Books, 2010); “Optimism and Pessimism in American Legal Philosophy,” in On Philosophy in American Law (Jay Mootz, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and “This is Not Your Father’s Autonomy: Lesbian and Gay Rights from a Feminist and Relational Perspective,” in Feminist and Queer Legal Theories: Intimate Encounters, Uncomfortable Conversations (Martha Fineman, et al., eds.) (Ashgate, 2009).

His writings have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Gender & the Law, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, the Minnesota Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the William and Mary Law Review, among others. He also blogs for the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carlos-a-ball). 

Professor Ball is a frequent speaker at conferences and symposia. In the last five years, he has presented papers at the annual meetings of the Association of American Law Schools, Law and Society, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Political Science Association. During that time, he has also presented his scholarship at the Colorado, Columbia, Emory, Fordham, Harvard, Georgetown, Minnesota, UCLA, Virginia, and William & Mary law schools, among others.