‘There is no doubt’, said K., ‘there is no doubt, that behind all the statements of this court, and in my case also behind the arrest and the current investigation, there stands a large organization. One that comprises not only bribable guards, oafish supervisors and at best unpretentious magistrates, but that also maintains a judiciary of a high or even the highest level, along with its myriad, inescapable entourage of servants, scribes, policemen and other assistants, perhaps even executioners – I’m not afraid of using that word. And the purpose of this organization, gentlemen? Its purpose is to arrest innocent people and to begin a pointless procedure against them which, as in my case, usually leads to no result.’

Thus Franz Kafka, often considered the father of modern bureaucratic horror, imagined justice. In his novel Der Prozess he sketched the vicissitudes of a man caught in a legal process whose exact cause and procedure remain obscure. Notwithstanding people's best intentions to help the protagonist with his case, no character in the story ever seems able to fully understand or work the system behind these proceedings. Kafka gave words to a fear of being caught up in the infernal machinations of a faceless legal bureaucracy, whose sole reason for existence was the realization of a purposeless show called the legal process.