The ranks of the court hierarchy were endless, and even an initiate could not grasp it in its entirety. Generally, court proceedings were kept secret from minor officials, so they could hardly ever wholly follow the cases they were dealing with as they progressed; court matters came to their notice without their knowing where they came from, and continued without their knowing how or where. So any knowledge that might be gained from studying the separate stages of a trial, the final verdict and the reasons for it, was all lost to these officials.

The Trial by Franz Kafka