He was appointed to the office of Court Astronomer (Chinese: 太史令; pinyin: tài shǐ lìng) at age 25 in 140 BCE, a position which he held until his death.
Its description, and the Shiji more generally, would suggest the Simas prefer a court with a wu wei semi-inactive ruler in a time when the central government was expanding.
Although disconnected, as later used the Mingjia school of names would at least seem to represent an actual social category interacted with by the Mohists, earlier referred to by the Zhuangzi as debaters.
Connected with a department of prisons, Fajia comes to mean something like Legalism, which contains Shang Yang and figures Sima Qian had described as rooted in Huang-Lao, or "Yellow Emperor and Laozi (Daoism)".
Emphasizing philosophical differences with the Confucians, Sinologist Herrlee G. Creel argued that it might have been misleading to list Shen Buhai together with Shang Yang under Fajia, with a combination of the two more common after the Han Feizi.
But Liu Xiang (scholar) at least readily recounts that, unlike Shang Yang, Shen Buhai vacillated against punishments, and they would at not seem to have attempted to individually obfuscate him.