Their Accomplices Wore Robes

A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America

Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. 

The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness.

Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.

“Their Accomplices Wore Robes is a stark, measured indictment of power dressed in principle. With it, Brando Simeo Starkey lays bare the quiet, deliberate mechanisms by which the Supreme Court has upheld a racial caste system—not as an aberration but as a feature of its design. This is not a book about what we wish to believe about justice; it is a book about what justice, in practice, has too often been. Starkey writes with clarity and precision, refusing easy conclusions or consolations. The result is an indictment of a judicial system that must be fundamentally reformed or abolished if we're to have real democracy.” --Donovan X. Ramsey, author of When Crack Was King, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the National Book Award

is a writer and scholar. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the New York Bar, he taught law at Villanova Law School and wrote for several years for ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape). Born and raised in Cincinnati, he lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. He will launch a newsletter, The Braveverse, about law, politics, and freedom from caste, at the TheBraveverse.com, in January 2025.

• Publisher: Doubleday
  
• Publish Date: June 3, 2025
  
• Pages: 688
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Hardback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9780385547383
  
• Dimensions: 9.3 X 6.1 X 1.7 inches | 2.2 pounds
  
• BISAC Categories: History, Biography & Memoir, Politics, Society & Current Affairs