1 Justice and the Family Anca Gheaus and Serena Olsaretti [Published in Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy Section: Justice, ed. Prof. Dr. John Tasioulas (2022), pp.1-11] 1. Introduction The topic of justice and the family encompasses a great many inter-related issues. Here we focus only on questions concerning the limits to parental authority that stem from what is owed to children. The debates surrounding the limits of parents’ authority raise philosophically important questions which are currently discussed by moral and political philosophers. They are also addressed by legal scholars, and we make a move towards integrating these bodies of literature. The questions at stake are at the heart of the justification of the family, understood as an institution in which one or more adults (parents) have legal and moral rights and obligations – including those that define their authority – vis-à-vis children who are in their care (typically, but not always, their biological children). They are, moreover, questions that have become increasingly pressing. Within a broadly liberal political philosophy, the conferral of rights on some people to exercise authority over others must be justified to those others; hence, the growing recognition of the child’s moral status puts pressure on some received wisdom concerning the family. In what follows we assume that children’s moral status means that their interests carry as much moral significance as the comparable interests of adults and we will centre our discussion on how children’s – rather than third parties’ – interests limit the remit of parental authority. We identify three kinds of interests of children that generate such limits: their interests in wellbeing, their interest in autonomy, and their interest in acquiring a sense of justice. The analysis of how theses interests limit the rights of parents has implications for a wealth of policy issues and decisions, such as those involving parents’ freedom to choose schools for their children, or homeschool them, enrol them in religious practices, modify their bodies (for instance, by circumcising them), raise them as vegans, restrict their access to relationships with others and dictate how they should spend their free time. These are matters of parental ethics more broadly, but since they can involve violation of children’s moral rights, at least some of them are also a fitting object of some legal regulation, including, possibly, the establishment of a parental licences scheme aimed at ensuring that parental authority is assigned to those who are not likely to abuse it or disrespect its limits (La Follette 2010). Sections 2 and 3 explain the significance of questions concerning the limits of parental authority and locate them within several on-going debates on the family. Sections 4, 5 and 6 discuss the three sources of limits on parental authority stemming from children’s interests. Section 7 concludes with a very brief overview of other important questions concerning justice and the family. 2. Children’s moral status For a long time, the law and philosophers alike assumed that children lack moral status or, at the very least, that their moral status was such that they cannot be rights-holders. For instance, the law permitted parents to sell their children, and, at least when very young, to let them die through exposure; today we believe that children have rights and are owed corresponding duties (Eekelaar 1992; Archard 1993). This claim is most plausible on an interest account of rights, but some argue that friends of the will theory