Afterwards, Jean Carbonnier taught at the Paris Law Faculty (replaced with Panthéon-Assas University in 1970) until 1976.

[3] Jean Carbonnier became President of L'Année Sociologique in 1964, and worked for the sociology journal during fifteen years.

[4] He also created and started heading the Laboratory for Legal Sociology[5][6] (Laboratoire de sociologie juridique) at Panthéon-Assas University in 1968 - in order to produce data that would help law making.

[10] Apart from his academic career, Jean Carbonnier was also a writer: his book Les incertitudes du jeune Saxon.

This element can be perceived while reading his theoretical works about law, since he always explained his thoughts with an elegant and precise way of writing.

Les incertitudes du jeune Saxon represents at the same time a fiction (sort of Bildungsroman) and a reflection about law and history.

Jean Carbonnier's vision of law was based on his own philosophy, which includes Protestantism, realism, skepticism, and empiricism[12] – always with open-mindedness.

At the same time a jurist and a sociologist, Jean Carbonnier played an important role in adapting law to society's traditions and customs.

This work represents his most famous one on the international level,[17] especially thanks to the concepts he developed, as well as his account of the relationship between jurisprudence and social sciences.

In Flexible droit[18] (1969), the core study was "non-law" ("non-droit"), considered as the essence of social life.

For Jean Carbonnier, when there is no law, other systems of social regulations will work instead – for instance, religion, morality, customs, friendships, or habits.

These methods include the opinion poll (IFOP, then INED) and field research in order to measure the "demand for law" expressed by citizens.

Sociologically, with the growing power of the media, lawmakers must react constantly, which result in an increasing production of laws.

Jean Carbonnier's theories are still topical: for instance, in 2006, the French Council of State (Conseil d'Etat) criticized the excesses that could threaten social cohesion in its annual report[28] about legal certainty (Sécurité juridique et complexité du droit).

The author speaks in terms of a "pulverisation in subjective rights" (pulvérisation en droits subjectifs).