The regulation of domestic drone use has been the subject of much media attention.  In addition to how much domestic drones should be regulated, scholars and policymakers are debating a more complex question, which is who should regulate drones. In this Essay, Margot Kaminski, Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project,  suggests that civilian drone use should be regulated by states rather than the federal government. She argues that because civilian drone use implicates privacy issues that states have previously regulated through statutes and common-law torts, and because there is a tension between privacy and First Amendment concerns that states will navigate better than the federal government, state law should - at least for now - be the primary means of governing civilian drone overflights.    

In this Book Review, Professor Glenn H. Reynolds looks to both the past and the future of space law. Drawing from his experience co-authoring one of the first comprehensive legal texts on outer-space law and legal issues, Professor Reynolds provides an expert's evaluation of The Laws of Spaceflight: A Guidebook for New Space Lawyers.    

Current CLR member Keagan D. Buchanan previews the Supreme Court's upcoming decision in Maryland v. King, which will decide whether Maryland's expansion of its DNA collection and analysis procedures to felony arrestees is constitutional.

This note is one of seven written by California Law Review members for Circuit's first annual Case Note Review.    

This piece expands upon the author's comments at the Henderson Center's Fall 2012 Symposium, "Heeding Frickey's Call: Doing Justice in Indian Country."

Connecticut School of Law Professor Bethany R. Berger looks at the relationship between descent-based tribal citizenship requirements and race or racism. She argues that tribal citizenship laws that require Indian or tribal descent are generally neither the product nor the source of racism in federal Indian law and policy, and instead are moral, legal, and consistent with federal and international norms.    

Countless academics have examined and discussed the importance of Chambers v. Mississippi in a multitude of areas including compulsory due process, admission of hearsay, third party guilt evidence, false confessions, racial evaluations of hearsay and witnesses, and morally reasonable verdicts. In contrast, this article attempts to excavate the account of a rural Mississippi community's struggle for rights that underlies the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chambers. On its face, the case has no link or reference to the civil rights movement. However, this paper reveals that local civil rights activists took armed, direct economic action for equal rights Woodville, Mississippi, and that activism characterized the events that precipitated the June 14, 1969 killing of Officer Aaron Liberty-Woodville's black police officer. The article concludes by developing two interrelated claims that are supported by the recovered narrative: in the narrative-which takes place in the gap between secured rights and on the ground realities-law is both everywhere and nowhere. National litigation influences the terms of exchange between the local movement and white opposition, while micro-mobilizations of the law through local law enforcement continually operate to suppress civil rights activity. At the same time, there is an absence of legal protections for the black community, who in response mobilizes an extra-legal self-defense group to bolster the power of boycotts and protect black neighborhoods.    

Using New Orleans as a case example, this Comment describes the dozens of fines, fees, and costs that may be imposed on criminal defendants. As the amount of criminal justice debt grows so too does the likelihood of incarceration for those unable to pay their financial obligations.

After describing these barriers, the Comment focuses on the constitutional and political concerns raised by fines, fees, and costs in New Orleans's criminal courts. Each criminal court in New Orleans is significantly funded by fees and costs, which raise millions of dollars for the Municipal, Criminal District, and Traffic Courts each year. The money, which is deposited into the courts' own bank accounts, helps pay for, among other costs, each court's operating expenses and non-judicial salaries. Because each court can only generate income from fees and costs if a criminal defendant is detained or convicted of a crime, the funding structure creates a financial incentive for judges to detain and convict criminal defendants. The Comment argues that the courts' funding structures violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees a right to a trial before an impartial judicial officer. Elaborating on this guarantee, Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510 (1927) and Ward v. Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57 (1972) found that the Due Process Clause is violated where, as in New Orleans, a judge has a personal or institutional financial stake in the outcome of a case. The Comment ends with several recommendations to reform the courts' funding structures to encourage a more just and fair criminal justice system in New Orleans.