How can I check if an object is orderable/sortable in Python? I'm trying to implement basic type checking for the __init__ method of my binary tree class, and I want to be able to check if the value of the node is orderable, and throw an error if it isn't. It's similar to checking for hashability in the implementation of a hashtable. I'm trying to accomplish something similar to Haskell's (Ord a) => etc. qualifiers. Is there a similar check in Python?