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News & Events
Obituary: Prof. Harry V. Ball
From ASA Footnotes
Contributed by Prof. Emeritus Kiyoshi Ikeda
Harry V. Ball, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, died, May 16, 2006. He was 79 and succumbed to cancer.
Ball was born in Wellston, St. Louis County, Missouri. Beginning his undergraduate studies at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri with a B.A. in Sociology, in 1944, he completed an M. A. at Washington University in 1950 and a Ph. D. at the University of Minnesota in 1956.
During his 56 plus years of scholarship, Ball made a significant contribution to sociological and social science research on law and society and to teaching and mentorship. Early on, Ball was involved directly and indirectly in matters of race and the law in employment, the community, and the capacity of the law to deter or improve equality and equity under changing social contexts. In the Summer of 1948, Ball served as Chief Field Investigator for the St. Louis, Missouri, Mayor's Commission on the Fairgrounds Park Race Riot. While at Washington University and at the University of Minnesota, he served as Research Assistant to Professor Arnold M. Rose and completed his Ph. D. under Professor Rose on A Sociological Study of Rent Control and Rent Control Violations in Honolulu: 1940-1954.
Honor and standing in the law and society community is indicated by becoming the first President of the Law and Society Association in 1964-1966, elected as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1966-84, as a member of Board of Editors of the Law and Society Review from 1966-74. His contributions to scholarly research and teaching on law and society began in major ways with serving as a Fellow in Social Science Research Council Summer Research Training Institutes on Legal Process in 1958, and in the Ford Foundation Summer Institute on Law and Desegregation in 1959 at University of Wisconsin at Madison, and as Fellow in the Ford Foundation Law and Behavioral Sciences Program in the University of Chicago Law School in 1959 to 1960. This was followed by appointment as Research Associate in The American Bar Foundation Study of the Administration of Criminal Justice in the United States at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1960-61 and as Lecturer in the University of Wisconsin Law School from 1961 to 1962. From 1962 to 1964, he served as Program Coordinator of the Russell Sage Foundation Sociology of Law Program at Madison. He served as Senior Faculty in the National Science Foundation Law and Behavioral Sciences Institute at Madison in 1968 and 1971. Ball laid the basis for scholarly work in law and society at Madison with the faculty at the Law School including Carl Auerbach, Lawrence Friedman, Stuart Macaulay, David Trubek and faculty in the Department of Sociology involving Jack Ladinsky, Jack Joel Grossman, and Marc Galanter. Stuart Macaulay notes the following: "Many played a role in the creation of the Law and Society Association in 1964, but Ball provided much of the energy and vision. Without Ball, something such as the Law and Society Association would have come, if at all, later and perhaps in a different form." Over a lifetime, Ball served to foster ties for law and society programs in universities and colleges involving faculty and staff in the law schools, the social sciences, and sociology. Besides recognition for high services in the Law and Society Association, Ball served in regional, national, and international associations as reader of journals and on national panels.
Ball's own scholarly research over a lifetime sought to examine promising theoretical frames and to collate, organize, and assess materials on the reciprocal changes in the larger social processes and the legal system on substantive law and cases. He researched and organized scholarly materials for examining how globally influenced structural rationalization of external law proceeds in a socially and culturally diverse setting in 19th and 20th century Hawai`i. Ball's lasting contributions to scholarly research is in the collation and organization of legal materials and associated community materials on the transformation of Native Hawaiian law from the early 1800's into more Western forms into the latter part of the 1900's. The coded legal materials are being digitized to aid researchers and scholars to explore major continuities and transformations and shifts in matters relating to land use and tenure, criminal, civil, administrative and allied matters with copies of materials in Hawaiian, English, other languages within court records and in newspapers, other publications, letters, and photos and images. The materials permit both quantitative and qualitative analyses about events, about personae as individuals and as critical masses in the judiciary and in the community on the evolution of the law over time in response to diverse local and global processes. The organization of available; materials on the continuous and shifting relations between legal structures and processes in regulating and mediating old and new grievances and disputes and routines in the changing stratification order and institutions is a remarkable feat. Students and scholars will be able to reexamine materials with available and new materials.
Besides national, international, and regional professional services and recognition, exceptional professional services within the community and institution also marked Ball's contributions. This work was grounded in active teaching, scholarship, and research in and around Hawai`i. Professional services to the community are numerous and active over a life time. In service as Interim Director of the University of Hawai`i Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Center (Youth Development Center) and participation in numerous panels and meetings, Ball engaged others to develop research, planning, and program oversight and line work in proficient and competent ways. Ball was a founding member of the Friends of the Hawai`i Judiciary History Center. His thorough research paved the way for the Judiciary History Center's exhibits.
Institutional service is remarkable in having served in major assignments within the Department, the College of Arts and Sciences, the campus as a whole in the Faculty Senate, in assessment of student outcomes, for developing post-baccalaureate bridge programs in medicine and law for under-represented Native Hawaiians, and search committees for Chancellors and Deans. He was able to set the overall framework of a viable and vibrant research university with a quality liberal arts program involving local, national, and international students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His Sociology of Law and Law and Social Change courses demanded a lot of students to read, to write, and to express themselves in scholarly and public ways. As programs and agency developments under his oversight proceeded, he worked with other faculty and staff to produce well-grounded undergraduates and graduate students who learned to perform at high levels in legal practice and research, in law-related service, and administrative and executive assignments in prevention, correction, and in visionary approaches to improving the lives of youths and adults who became involved with the law
He is survived by spouse, Benna Lou, son James, daughter Christine Patterson, son, Jeff, and by grandchildren Jensen and Kelsea Ball, Taharqa, Xavier, Tabara and Keoni Patterson, and Emily, Elyssa, and Dylan Ball.
