Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Brando Simeo Starkey, "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System" (Doubleday, 2025)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Brando Simeo Starkey, "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System" (Doubleday, 2025)
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) 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 to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward.
Brando Simeo Starkey 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. You can find him online at The Braveverse, and on his YouTube channel of the same name.
You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Brando continue their conversation.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law
View all episodes
By New Books Network
4.1
1414 ratings
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) 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 to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward.
Brando Simeo Starkey 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. You can find him online at The Braveverse, and on his YouTube channel of the same name.
You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Brando continue their conversation.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law
More shows like New Books in Law
View all
In Our Time
5,412 Listeners
We the People
1,107 Listeners
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
3,954 Listeners
New Books in History
209 Listeners
Bloomberg Law
361 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
193 Listeners
New Books in Military History
162 Listeners
New Books in Economics
26 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
161 Listeners
New Books in Anthropology
49 Listeners
New Books in Environmental Studies
23 Listeners
New Books in Sociology
46 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
110 Listeners
The Lawfare Podcast
6,293 Listeners
New Books in Critical Theory
143 Listeners
New Books in Asian American Studies
25 Listeners
The NPR Politics Podcast
25,882 Listeners
Philosophy For Our Times
304 Listeners
Why Theory
565 Listeners
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
6,880 Listeners
Strict Scrutiny
5,697 Listeners
Acid Horizon
175 Listeners
The Rest Is History
13,109 Listeners
Divided Argument
666 Listeners
Ones and Tooze
346 Listeners