Judge John Ball

John Ball has participated in the China Jessup every year since its inception in 2003. Originally from the rural Arcadian Upper Perkiomen Valley near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Mr Ball is a member of the bars of the state of Pennsylvania and the US District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania. In 1988 he earned his JD at Temple University School of Law, where he was awarded the Raynes Prize for best research dissertation in his graduating class. After several years of private and entrepreneurial law practice in Philadelphia, in 1994 Mr Ball sold his car and all his antiques and gave away his cat, to move to London to earn another postgraduate degree in International Relations. Consequently Mr Ball became an adjunct lecturer in International Law at University of Kent’s London Centre of International Relations, while simultaneously working in the archives at the London Library under the personal auspices of Mary, the late Countess of Bessborough, whose late husband Eric, Earl of Bessborough, was Britain’s first representative at the European Parliament. In 1995, Mr Ball delivered a paper at the Pan-European Conference in Paris, on the onto-theological foundations of European Law.

In 1998-1999, Mr Ball was a lecturer in International Law at Ural State Law Academy in Ekaterinburg, Russia, under the sponsorship of George Soros’ Open Society Institute and Civic Education Project. In November 1999, he was interviewed on Russia’s national TV documentary, “Uspekh”, regarding his personal methods of introducing Western ways of teaching law and social sciences in formerly Communist states. Since then, he has also been a guest lecturer on International Law and International Relations at several universities in Russia, Finland, and Indonesia. He has published two articles on his experiences in Russia in Oxford University’s journal of humanities, Contemporary Review, a successor of an 18^th century journal established by Dr Samuel Johnson.

Mr Ball serendipitously met Professor Zhu WenQi in January 2003, while he was a visiting lecturer of Teaching Methodology at RenMin University in Beijing. Professor Zhu invited Mr Ball to be a judge at China’s first Jessup, and then afterward, Professor Zhu asked Mr Ball to think about staying in China longer, in order to assist China in developing China’s new and growing expertise in International Law. Consequently, as per the recommendations of Zhu WenQi, John Ball taught for two years at the China University of International Relations, where Mr Ball became that university’s first Jessup coach. Then in 2005, Mr Ball began to teach at Xiamen University Law School, where he was a co-coach of XiaDa’s champion Jessup team in 2006, who won the Dillard Award in Washington.

After five years in China, in 2007 Mr Ball moved to Australia, to join the lady who is now his wife, Dr Wai Ling Yeung, an Australian citizen originally from Hong Kong. Thus, John Ball says there is beautiful poetic justice in how he has now literally married into the great extended family of the people of China.

Today John Ball lives with his wife Wai Ling and their half-poodle, half-cocker spaniel friend Sam, in Perth, Western Australia, where Mr Ball is currently working on his book, “Crystal Curtain, Tower of Sand” about the protracted collapse of the two Cold War “superpowers” Russia and America, and he is also doing research on illegal logging in Southeast Asia. He welcomes correspondence from any and all China Jessup judges, whom he looks forward to chatting with in person in Beijing in 2010.

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