pettifoggery

noun

1. The actions of a pettifogger; a trivial quarrel.

   “He was capable of using lawyerly rhetoric, at times, to the brink of pettifoggery.”

   “Yet even Harlan was to prove capable of grievous pettifoggery on the racial issue.”

   “[Frankfurter's reasoning in Beauharnais v. Illinois] struck Black and the other three Roosevelt appointees who joined his dissent as noxious pettifoggery[.]”

   “The idea that a minor bureaucratic restructuring could have made any difference in the time of Trump reflected how immune bureaucratic pettifoggery is to reality.”