Although everyone who deals professionally with legal issues moans about him, even his lawyers, who make good money from his belligerence, the troublemaker has remained a stepchild of legal sociology.

Who are these people who just won't give up after a lost process and try again and again despite minimal chances of success?

Often over a period of years, they trouble the authorities with hundreds of lawsuits, petitions and complaints, without being deterred by the failure of these initiatives.

But what for?

In the area of ​​law, the troublemaker is considered a nuisance, and time and again the apparent irrationality of his actions has encouraged those afflicted to deny him his understanding or at least his ability to stand trial.

Despite the obvious dangers of abuse, this possibility also exists in many recognized constitutional states.

Two Israeli legal scholars recently called for more patience with the troublemaker.

Otherwise, she fears, his anger will vent elsewhere – and then uncontrollably.

The required long-suffering of the offices should therefore help to isolate a source of danger.

A similar thought can be found in Niklas Luhmann's sociology of court proceedings.

This classic of the sociology of law is about the disappointments that the trial causes for those who lost it and who are now asked to free themselves from a legal standpoint with which they have personally identified before others.

Contrary to what was assumed in the rationalist theory of the procedure, this not only requires the correction of an error, but also the remodeling of a personality.

Luhmann therefore finds it completely normal that such a relearning of normative expectations fails in many cases.

Combination of denied study and self-isolation

Court proceedings cannot then rule out the defiant reactions to be expected, but it can ensure that the disappointed person personalizes his or her concerns so strongly in the proceedings that it is then no longer able to appeal to others.

Not the loser's change of conviction, but the depoliticization of his legal criticism can be ensured by participating in the proceedings.

The troublemaker is a prime example of this combination of denied learning and self-isolation on the part of the refuser.

The path he chooses for himself in order not to have to learn makes him incomprehensible to others.

In order to be able to hold on to his expectations, he must first explain the disappointing verdict in a way that does not call into question the justification for this expectation.

There are two different options for this, which the troublemaker goes through one after the other.

He can attribute the verdict to the coincidence that the judge of the first instance was personally opposed to him.

Or he attributes the disappointment to permanent reasons, so that its repetition in the next case and the one after that is no longer surprising.

He may then believe that the judges have conspired with the lawyers to get rid of him because they know that his legal criticism is right and they secretly tremble before it.

The attribution to chance has the benefit of suggesting further experimentation and the disadvantage of

Not being able to explain series failures.

The conspiracy theory achieves exactly this, but only at the price that those who are convinced of it should actually resign.

One of the riddles the troublemaker poses is this: Why doesn't he stop complaining before judges whom he considers to be his allied opponents conspiring against him?

For the troublemaker, the judiciary is no longer the authority he appeals to in a dispute with his neighbor, his wife or the dealer, it is rather his opponent's ally and should therefore be fought just like him - for example by giving her as much pointless work as possible power.

This twist also changes the meaning of the lost processes.

They show him a legal system that is not impressed by the change in cases and arguments, instances and decision-makers, but consistently decides against him, and that is precisely the proof that he is not exaggerating when he is in front of others appears as a victim of extreme injustice: the suffering that he displays in public, which of course only rarely looks, is not made up.