Intellectual Property as Personal Right

Sor Juana's defence of her own writing and study against institutional censure establishes intellectual labour as inseparable from personal dignity and autonomy. She argued that a woman's mind and its products were her own property, resistant to confiscation by patriarchal or ecclesiastical authority. This concept refuses to separate knowledge-creation from bodily autonomy or property rights. For libertarian justice, it means recognizing that freedom of thought and expression are foundational property claims—not granted by institutions but inherent to the person. Intellectual property then becomes not a monopoly granted by the state, but protection of what one has already created through one's own faculties. This grounds property rights in labour, creativity, and self-ownership rather than state decree.