Professor W. David Ball works primarily in the field of criminal justice, writing and teaching in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, sentencing and corrections. His articles have been published in the Columbia Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the Yale Law and Policy Review, and the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He is the co-author (with Michelle Oberman) of an open-source criminal law casebook.
Ball has been Co-Chair of the Corrections Committee of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section for more than a decade. He has also served as the Chair of the Public Safety Working Group for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Law and Policy and was a member of the Santa Clara County Alternatives to Incarceration Taskforce.
Prior to becoming a full time member of the Santa Clara University School of Law faculty in 2009, Ball served as a Social Justice Teaching Fellow at Santa Clara, a Research Fellow at the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, and a law clerk for the Honorable John T. Noonan, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Before law school he was an actor, writer, and filmmaker in New York City. He graduated with highest distinction from the University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead-Cain Scholar, and got a second BA from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling, photography, and playing with his cat-sized dogs, Nellie and Iris.
J.D., Stanford University
B.A./M.A., Oxford University
B.A., University of North Carolina
Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Sentencing & Corrections
Articles
Proving Actionable Racial Disparity Under the California Racial Justice Act, with Colleen Chien and William A. Sundstrom, ___ Hastings L.J. ___ (forthcoming 2023)
The Peter Parker Problem, 95 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 879 (2020)
The Plausible and the Possible: A Bayesian Approach to the Analysis of Reasonable Suspicion, 55 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 511-536 (2018) | Link to Digital Commons
Pay-for-Performance in Prisons: Using Healthcare Economics to Improve Criminal Justice, 94 U. Denver L. Rev. 451-495 (2017) | Link to Digital Commons
“A False Idea of Economy”: Costs, Counties, and the Origins of the California Correctional System, 664 Ann. Am. Acad. Poli. Sci. 26-42 (March 2016) | Link to Digital Commons
Redesigning Sentencing, 46 McGeorge Law Review 817-841 (2014) | Link to Digital Commons
Why State Prisons?, 33 Yale Law and Policy Review 75-117 (2014) | Link to Digital Commons
Defunding State Prisons, 50 Criminal Law Bulletin Art. 2 (2014) | Link to Digital Commons
Tough on Crime (on the State's Dime): How Violent Crime Does Not Drive California Counties' Incarceration Rates - And Why it Should, 28 Georgia State University Law Review 987-1083 (2012) | Link to Digital Commons
The Civil Case at the Heart of Criminal Procedure: In Re Winship, Stigma, and the Civil-Criminal Distinction, 38 American Journal of Criminal Law 117-180 (2011) | Link to Digital Commons
Normative Elements of Parole Risk, 22 Stanford Law & Policy Review 395-411 (2011) | Link to Digital Commons
E Pluribus Unum: Data and Operations Integration in the California Criminal Justice System, 21 Stanford Law and Policy Review 277-309 (2010) | Link to Digital Commons
Heinous, Atrocious, and Cruel: Apprendi, Indeterminate Sentences, and the Meaning of Punishment, 109 Columbia Law Review 893-972 (2009) | Link to Digital Commons
Mentally Ill Prisoners in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Strategies for Improving Treatment and Reducing Recidivism, 24 Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 1-42 (2007) | Link to Digital Commons
Other
Criminal Justice Information Sharing: A Legal Primer for Criminal Practitioners in California with Weisberg. [s.n.] (2010) (electronic resource) | Link to Digital Commons