Carbonnier, Jean

           Carbonnier, Jean

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PRESENTATION

Carbonnier, Jean (1908-2003), French lawyer, one of the Masters of the contemporary legal thought.

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THE COMMON LAWYER SOCIOLOGIST

Attracted by the right and the political economy, Jean Carbonnier is the pupil of Julien Bonnecase to the Faculty of Law of Bordeaux, whereas Leon Duguit is the senior. After a thesis of doctorate in civil law devoted to the marriage settlement, it is received with the aggregation of the Faculty of Law (private law). In 1937, it is named professor in Poitiers, where it teaches the civil procedure, then civil law. He becomes senior of the Faculty of Law of Poitiers, before being a professor with the Faculty of Law of Paris (1955-1976).

In 1965, it succeeds George Gurvitch in the teaching of legal sociology in the Sorbonne. It is under its impulse that the legal laboratory of sociology of the faculty of Paris is created.

Appeared in 1969 in right Flexible device,  its "texts for a sociology of the right without rigour" expose its design of legal sociology: it seems a method there making it possible to widen the documentation of the lawyers on the right conceived under all its aspects, including the least dogmatic: "legal sociology especially studied the legal provision [… ];that it studies also the judgement [… ]; that it studies also nonthe right, all the phenomena of absence of right ".

Wondering about the normative function of legal sociology, Jean Carbonnier estimates that it is not a question D ' "of extracting a standard in suspension in the social background", but "to make that the standard, from where that it comes, is not in this social background a foreign body". Anxious to see walking on in theoretical concert sociology and practical sociology, it tests the validity of its theory by subjecting it the reality proof. It is primarily by preparing bills that it can check the effectiveness of the means of action of legal sociology.

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The LEGISLATOR OPPOSED To the INFLATION OF The LAWS

It is by the means of its legislative activity that Jean Carbonnier avoids seeing his work confined with a purely theoretical research. Professor in Paris, it takes part in the reflexion on the possible evolution of the right. The Minister for Justice Jean Foyer then entrusts the mission to him of thinking of legislative reforms made necessary by the evolution of manners, in particular in right of the family.

Thus Jean Carbonnier prepares the preliminary drafts of the laws relating to the reform of the supervision and the legal administration (1964), then on the marriage settlements (1965), like on filiation (1972) and the divorce (1975), to only quote most significant.

Although it is one of the principal instigators of the restoration of the civil law as from the years 1960, Jean Carbonnier does not criticize of them less L ' "inflation legal" which characterizes according to him France contemporary (Right and passion of the right under the O C République,  1996); protesting against the French propensity which consists in legislating as soon as a problem emerges, with the consequence to empty the standard of its substance and of his credibility, Jean Carbonnier preaches a maturation in the development of the laws and the use of jurisprudence to arrive to a pragmatic evolution of the right.