Nicholas Ball (lawyer)

Nicholas Ball PC (Ire), QC (1791 – 19 January 1865) was an Irish barrister, judge and Liberal politician.

He was the second son of John Ball, a silk mercer of Dublin, where he lived for many years at No 75, St Stephen's Green.

As a young man he travelled widely in Europe and spent two years in Rome, where he was said to have met members of the Curia to discuss Catholic Emancipation.

A moderate reformer in politics, he had naturally supported Catholic Emancipation (he had been accused, rather improbably, of negotiating on the subject with the Vatican while still in his early twenties), but he firmly opposed repeal of the Act of Union 1800.

When he subsequently was appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland), he was only the second Roman Catholic since the reign of King James II of England to have held this post.