Can the One-System Picture Be Systematic?

The emergence of the one-system picture is one of the most significant developments within general jurisprudence in decades. The one-system picture promises an account of legal obligations, privileges, powers, and immunities as part of morality. One of its chief contemporary proponents (Greenberg) treats it as thereby offering a new account of legal content, which rivals familiar two-system forms of positivism and antipositivism. The other (Hershovitz) treats it as abandoning the idea of legal content, and thereby ushering in the ‘end of jurisprudence’—that is, leaving jurisprudence as a subject with no object. This essay starts with the observation that the one-system picture promises more than it has provided. We were promised a view about legal obligations etc.; but we were only provided with an account of legal obligations. So, can the one-system picture provide a systematic account? Can it explain all legal norms—including legal privileges, powers, and immunities—as moral norms? I explore two challenges—the problem of inconsistency, and the problem of idiosyncrasy—that the one-system picture faces once it seeks to be systematic.