Foreword: Caste as Practice, Analogy, and Metaphor

Mark A. Graber

The 2025 Maryland Constitutional Law Schmooze focused on caste as an analogy. The Schmooze, an annual gathering of law professors, political scientists, historians, and others, brings members of different disciplines together to have a free-flowing conversation on a topic of broad interdisciplinary interests. While that conversation and “tickets of admission” occasionally discussed practices in Southeast Asia or practices that immigrated to the United States with Southeast Asians, the conversation and most papers focused on caste as an analogy. Some participants questioned whether the caste analogy is useful. Others embraced the analogy with varying degrees of enthusiasm.