Daily Inspiration Quote by William J. Brennan, Jr.

“Legitimate class of one” is bureaucratic poetry with a blade tucked inside. Brennan is describing an individual so uniquely situated that Congress can treat him as his own category, and still claim it’s acting within the bounds of lawful, non-arbitrary government. The phrase “legitimate” is doing heavy constitutional labor: it signals that singling someone out is usually suspect in American law, but here is the exception Congress wants to justify.

The second half - “proceed with dispatch” - is the alibi. Speed becomes a virtue, not a shortcut, because the target isn’t a person in the ordinary political sense; he’s “his materials.” That substitution matters. It narrows the moral field from rights and punishment to documents and national interests, a classic move when institutions need to move fast without looking vengeful.

Brennan’s intent is not to celebrate this logic but to frame it with surgical precision: he’s articulating the government’s rationale in language that exposes its architecture. The subtext is anxiety about precedent. If Congress can invent a “class” for one inconvenient figure, it’s skirting the principle that laws should be general rather than personal. At the same time, Brennan acknowledges the political reality that certain cases - involving sensitive information, state power, or perceived threats - generate irresistible pressure for exceptional handling.

In that tension, the sentence captures a recurring American bargain: we’ll call it principled classification so we don’t have to admit it’s targeted power.