"We will utterly discharge from their offices --- and they shall not hold office again in England --- the relatives of Gerard de Athée, namely: Engelard de Cigogné, Peter, Guy and Andrew de Chanceaux, Guy de Cigogné, Geoffrey de Martingny and his brothers, and Philip Marc, his brothers and his nephew Geoffrey, and all their following." Thus sayeth paragraph 50 of that great milestone in the annals of justice, the Magna Carta.

Later jurisprudence called this sort of law into question. English authorities got into the habit of by royal decree or act of parliament declaring that so-and-so was a traitor and an outlaw. Back then the latter concept had nothing to do with motorcycles --- to be an outlaw meant and means to be declared beyond the protection of the law, and thus liable to be killed, robbed, tortured or raped by any person. A law that declares one specific person a criminal, or that is designed to impose legal sanctions or disabilities on a particular individual, is a bill of attainder, something that was abolished in the American branch of the Common Law by the US Constitution. One particularly vile form of the bill of attainder was corruption of the blood, by which not only an individual but all of his or her descendants could be branded traitors and outlaws. Corruption of the blood was commonly invoked when rival lineages claimed the English throne.

Today outlawry, bills of attainder and corruption of the blood violate international law, including the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the customary law of nations.

And yet, versions of these things are fairly common to this day, especially in societies that have just undergone revolutions. From the 1930s until the middle of 1979, the Somoza family was above the law in Nicaragua, and amassed a huge fortune by abusing its power and position. When they were overthrown the entire family was dispossessed, and despite the subsequent ouster of those who ran the Somozas out of Nicaragua, the former tyrants' relatives have not regained their confiscated wealth.

At the risk of facing ridicule or even criminal charges, let me suggest that any assembly convened to draft a new constitution for Panama ought to dispossess a few families.

I'm not saying that we should soak the rich, confiscate everything that every member of every lineage of the old Creole aristocracy owns, undertake a vendetta against all members of one of more poltical parties, or punish former public officials just for having served in an unsavory government. However, we presently have a government that claims nepotism as a right, a government with many officials who are openly looting with the expectation of impunity, a government in which a few families have multiple members taking home fat paychecks from public coffers that are being rapidly emptied.

Other families became rich, or richer, in similar ways at times when the PRD held power. However, only the Noriega years approached the current looting binge in the scale, audacity and concentration of public corruption. Moreover, many of those who prospered in the dictatorship's darkest days were later deprived of their wealth and positions, though not always justly so. Others adroitly switched sides and were wrongly allowed to retain ill-gotten profits.

Do we want to establish justice and the rule of law? Then Mireya Moscoso and her relatives, and her cronies and their relatives, need to be stripped of the wealth they have accumulated in public office. The only way to ensure that the current era of generalized corruption is never repeated is to make a long-lasting example of how it doesn't pay.

In normal times, laws with names and surnames are a bad idea. But the evil King John wasn't forced to sign the Magna Carta in normal times. The knights took up arms at Runnymeade at a time when the rule of law was a sick joke and any attempt to try the thuggish Gerard de Athée and his abusive relatives in the king's legal system would have been a mockery of justice.

These aren't normal times in Panama, either. Under the present system Mireya's collection of privileged clans has everything sewn up, and the straightjacket in which they have bound this nation needs to be shredded by legislation that includes names and surnames.

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