Rereading Kafka's The Trial: Responsibility, Reflection, and the Case of the Dutch Childcare Allowance Scandal

22 Pages Posted: 31 Mar 2025

See all articles by Lukas van den Berge

Lukas van den Berge

Utrecht University - Faculty of Law

Jeanne Gaakeer

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: March 14, 2025

Abstract

As standard interpretation has it, Kafka's novel The Trial depicts how an innocent and defenceless individual is crushed by powerful and absurdly bureaucratic institutions. No wonder, therefore, that The Trial is often linked to the British Post Office Scandal, the Australian Robodebt Scheme, the Dutch Childcare Allowance Scandal and other such affairs that rendered many people helpless in their fights against flawed systems and disinterested governments. This paper explores the significance for judicial ethics and legal practice of an alternative interpretation of The Trial-and of Kafka's works more in generalthat has been most compellingly proposed by Walter H. Sokel. An important conclusion will be that Sokel's alternative understanding of Kafka and the Kafkaesque yields even more important insights into the workings of modern law and government than the standard interpretation.

Keywords: bureaucracy, (judicial) responsibility, Walter Sokel, formalism, legal hermeneutics, integrity, existentialism

Suggested Citation

van den Berge, Lukas and Gaakeer, Jeanne, Rereading Kafka's The Trial: Responsibility, Reflection, and the Case of the Dutch Childcare Allowance Scandal (March 14, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5178474 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5178474

Lukas Van den Berge (Contact Author)

Utrecht University - Faculty of Law ( email )

Janskerkhof 3
Utrecht, 3512 BK
Netherlands

Jeanne Gaakeer

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
32
Abstract Views
164
PlumX Metrics