Courtney Minick
Courtney Minick

Courtney Minick is an attorney, blogger, and product manager at Justia, Inc. She manages Justia's online catalog of primary materials and advocates for open access to the law. She blogs regularly on citation reform, open access, legal technology at the Justia Law, Technology, and Legal Marketing Blog. 

Ms. Minick also works as an advocate against the death penalty. She serves on the Board of Directors at Death Penalty Focus, a leading abolition group in California. She served as a Communications Officer for Proposition 34, a 2012 California State ballot initiative that sought to replace the death penalty with life without parole. 

Ms. Minick received her B.A. in English at Northwestern University, and her J.D., with a Certificate in Public Interest and Social Justice, from Santa Clara University School of Law.

Columns by Courtney Minick
Protesters or Pirates?

Justia guest columnist and attorney Courtney Minick discusses a decision in which a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s denial of an injunction sought by Japanese whalers against the direct-action advocacy organization Sea Shepherd Society. Minick discusses the district court’s reasoning and decision denying the injunction, which focus on determining what constitutes a pirate. She then describes the Ninth Circuit’s decision reversing the lower court, calling into question the Ninth Circuit’s procedural decision to reassign the case to a different judge on remand. She concludes that while the definition of piracy may be evolving, different countries may yet come to different outcomes in deciding what constitutes a pirate for the purpose of enforcing domestic laws and international treaties.