pettifoggery

Noun

 * 1) The actions of a pettifogger; a trivial quarrel.
 * 2) * 2011, Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, Knopf Doubleday (2011), p. 82
 * Yet even Harlan was to prove capable of grievous pettifoggery on the racial issue.
 * 1) * 2011, Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, Knopf Doubleday (2011), p. 601
 * [Frankfurter's reasoning in Beauharnais v. Illinois] struck Black and the other three Roosevelt appointees who joined his dissent as noxious pettifoggery[.]
 * [Frankfurter's reasoning in Beauharnais v. Illinois] struck Black and the other three Roosevelt appointees who joined his dissent as noxious pettifoggery[.]