Justice as Recognition of Child Personhood

Sor Juana claimed her right to intellectual engagement and social recognition not as a special favor but as her due as a person of inherent worth. Justice for children must similarly rest on recognizing them as full persons—not incomplete beings waiting to mature, not property of parents, not objects of charity, but moral agents deserving dignity now. This distinction transforms children's rights from a protective stance into a justice stance. Protection alone risks treating children as passive recipients of adult care; justice recognizes them as rights-bearers whose dignity must be actively honored. Justice for children includes their right to participate in decisions affecting them, to have their interests considered equally with adults', and to be treated with the respect due to any person. This concept challenges practices that infantilize children or treat their needs as secondary to adult interests or convenience. Through Sor Juana's insistence on her own recognition as a worthy intellectual and moral agent, we understand that children deserve similar recognition—not someday when they mature, but now, in their current personhood. Justice begins when we cease seeing children as problems to manage and start seeing them as people to honor.