pettifoggery

This proves, according to Ezra, that conservative and Republican opposition to the current iteration of the individual mandate is just legal pettifoggery and political opportunism.

Give me liberty or give me health care Charles Lane 2011

Of such squeamish pettifoggery are cultural declines made!

Socialist Hate Speech of Antiquity, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

Rehnquist's disdain for drawn-out cases and pettifoggery by lawyers is legendary.

A President In The Dock 2008

Then there are Rice's own inconsistencies in her public statements, the transcripts of which are a gold mine of contradiction and pettifoggery.

April 2004 2004

When a sergeant at the Police Academy asked Mr. Conlon if he had really attended Harvard, he replied with a pettifoggery worthy of his white-shoe classmates: "Not lately, Sarge" is the literal truth camouflaged as sarcasm.

A Quietly Remarkable Memoir Walks a Beat From H.U. to NYPD 2004

And some want to have everything done accurately, while others are annoyed by accuracy, either because they cannot follow the connexion of thought or because they regard it as pettifoggery.

Metaphysics Aristotle 2002

I don't know what Mr. Samuels is getting at, but do I smell a whiff of pettifoggery here?

The Indonesian Way Samuels, Willem 1990

That is not literary criticism; that is pettifoggery.

The Indonesian Way Samuels, Willem 1990

The rest of Dr.T. 's epistle is pettifoggery, but I am surprised that a scholarly person, who should be conversant with the findings of modern Russian history (from Kliuchevsky onward to Crankshaw), would defend the wholly discredited Romanov dynasty, which inflicted such continuous harm on Russian culture.

Cranberry Jello Tarassuk, Leonid 1978

Hopeless to seek either direct or indirect cooperation here; the man seemed a living definition of pettifoggery.

Trullion: Alastor 2262 Vance, Jack 1973