Litigious Paranoia: Sense of Justice, Bureaucracy, and Media

ADMINISTORY ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR VERWALTUNGSGESCHICHTE BAND 3, 2018 SEITE 201–217 D O I : 10.2478/ADHI-2018-0037 Litigious Paranoia: Sense of Justice, Bureaucracy, and Media RUPERT GADERER Sense of Justice ›Quarrelers‹, according to the president of the German justice in connection with the Anglo-American law-and- Federal Administrative Court between 1958 and 1969, emotion debate,3 which in German-speaking countries should not be judged with the same standards as a has been discussed for the most part under the concept common citizen.1 People who take excessive legal action ›Rechtsgefühl‹ (sense of justice). In Germany, most of the and fle countless complaints are – in his opinion – contributions have come from the feld ›legal sociology‹ usually sick. Still today forensic psychiatry assumes that and in recent years research has been carried out in such querulous behavior is the result of a pathological the cultural and literary sciences.4 The present media- increase in an emotion, or more specifcally a pathological historical investigation of litigious paranoia takes these increase in a person’s ›sense of justice‹.2 Litigious results into consideration and emphasizes three aspects paranoia is said to be an obsessive endeavor to realize in particular. First, the question of the historicity of justice and a concept of justice – the origin of which can emotions is pursued, the temporally and spatially be found in the human psyche. It is precisely the legal dependent power derived from emotions to take action system and psychiatry that, in the history of litigious and the social contextualization of emotions.5 Second, paranoia or paranoia querulans, have dealt extensively those media are shifted from the periphery to the center with this behavior, after all they, as the observers of of cognitive interest which are brought into play to society and the authorities for pronouncing judgments, transfer the fury, the hate, but also the desperation and were and are most afected by it. This assessment is still the sufering to the bureaucratic situations, to store and confrmed by administrative employees, physicians, erase them. Third, those power relationships will be and lawyers when they are confronted every day with dealt with that come into play in the history of litigious angry emotions in numerous letters, emails, or personal paranoia as a result of emotions activated by the media. conversations: fury, contempt, hate, pride, but also fear, One focus in this paper is the technologies of power sufering, and hope. to depart from the notion that the impact of power In the last few years, investigations have been results frst of all from rules, laws, and prohibitions.6 carried out on the relationship between emotions and If one summarizes these three aspects, one can say © 2019 Rupert Gaderer. Published by Sciendo. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). AD INISTORY 3/2018 that the goal of this paper was to fnd, using a media Those parties that do not submit to the prescribed order, history of litigious paranoia, the legal and psychiatric but rather discommode either their colleagues and their power relationships and to identify the diferent superiors with apparently unfounded and unlawful recording methods which play a role in documenting complaints against better science and convictions; the knowledge of querulous behavior as an excessive or after they have been shown to be in the wrong, emotion. nonetheless continue with their suits, and by means of Without the systematic consideration of these repeated inappropriate petitioning, to attempt to force elements – which is the assertion of this paper – the and assert something, in violation of law and order; emotions that play a role in querulous behavior cannot or fnally undertake to bother the Justice Department, be recognized and described in all their complexity. or the person of His Majesty the King with false and However, the methodological decision behind this inaccurate presentations of their demands, or with comes with consequences: The emphasis is not placed untrue and fctitious allegations and insults of their on the subjects who have been made outcasts, as the colleagues and the courts shall be seen as malicious president of the Administrative Court and numerous or spiteful quarrelers (German, Querulanten), shall be psychiatric and legal investigations have done. Rather, it tried, and their sentence shall be legally binding (§ 30 is the techniques, actions, and implementations that are AGO, Part III, 1). investigated, which convert a behavior and its respective Knowledge about »malicious or spiteful quarrelers« emotions into relationships on which commentaries are (§ 30 AGO, Part III, 1) came from social control, possible. It is not a matter of who, when, and where bureaucratic surveillance, and legal discipline. A a person was labeled querulous – not an empirical plaintif who carried the threat of acting querulously, list of names, dates, places, or ofenses. The stakes in either at present or in the future, was understood to be this media-historical approach consist of placing the a disturbance by the bureaucratic power. Quarrelers emphasis on operations and cultural techniques, as were, in the regulations and codes of the Prussian they rely on symbols, persons, and material artifacts, administration, conceived of as a disturbance in the interchange them, and are responsible for investigating complex bureaucratic procedures because they fled and punishing someone as a querulous person. Of too many complaints. At a particular time and in course, a media history of the excessive sense of justice precisely designated spaces, the quarreler was thus deals with people who are labeled querulous – that goes observed, examined, and closely watched by the without saying. However, one dare not fall into the trap Prussian administrative apparatus, both as a specifc of overlooking the cultural tools and media which are type of plaintif and as a writer. Individuals who hidden behind litigious paranoia. were investigated by the bureaucratic power brought attention to themselves by their repeated infractions. The plaintifs caused the mountains of records to The ›Creation‹ of Querulanten continue to grow and overtaxed the elementary forms of action for fling records in Prussia.7 Before querulency was investigated as a form of insanity, The creation of quarrelers can be described it was a bureaucratic problem. Towards the end of the as an efect of the media, or more specifcally, we 18th century, the bureaucratic power of Prussia, efected should call this an efect of the ›supplication‹ system by the General Court Code for the Prussian States of 6 of the 18th century. The ›supplication‹ system July 1793 (AGO: Allgemeine Gerichtsordnung für die was the institutionalized means of appealing to Preußischen Staaten), created the modern querulous governmental authorities in the form of requests, fgure by imposing controlled forms of legal writing on complaints, or lawsuits. In the 18th century, the term individuals. In this codifed text on natural law, in which ›Supplik‹ referred to a petition or a letter of grievance the rules for plaintifs and legal justice in court cases complaining about an injustice sufered by the writer.8 Rupert Gaderer — Litigious Paranoia were stipulated, the quarreler was created as a specifc People sent ›Suppliken‹ to the sovereign authorities to 202 type of informed plaintif in administrative legal cases: complain about infringements of the law. At that time, AD INISTORY 3/2018 petitioners were given a channel for bringing their petitioners by a bureaucratic power over writing. In assumed injustice to the attention of the sovereign their ›Suppliken‹, the millers pleaded with terms such as authorities by means of the paper medium the ›Supplik‹ »innbrünstigst« (most fercely), »ächzend« (groaningly), and the bureaucratic procedure ›Supplikation‹. In the »fehend« (imploringly), »weinend« (with crying), and regulations and codes of the Prussian administration, »seufzend« (with sighing) to arouse the attention of the quarrelers were conceived of as a disturbance in their sovereign.10 The millers summoned the sovereign the complex bureaucratic process around 1800 because and the ›Supplik‹ summoned the petitioners to reveal they fled too many petitions. Besides this administrative their own emotions which resulted from unjust attacks connection, it should be noted that a specifc from the ofcials who pronounced judgment on the relationship developed between justice and emotions in Arnolds and rejected their petitions. the late 18th century. The concept of a sense of justice The pleas and rituals of such texts were not subject arose in connection with aesthetic, anthropological, to any antagonistic order; they were not as contradictory and moral–philosophical discussions in the late 18th or collisional as has been assumed at times.11 Much century. In the Age of Enlightenment, they led to the more so, it can be claimed that the complaints served afrmation of epistemological characteristics of these the ritual, as petitions are ritualized cries and are emotions. Distinguishing between just and unjust was, subject to a bureaucratic management of emotions. The as conceived at that time, a process involving reason petitioning language distances itself over and over again but also emotional feelings. The sense of justice was from linguistic regimentation when scenes of sufering considered a subjective seismograph

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