Sébastien De Rey

At UCLouvain, Sébastien De Rey teaches Comparative European Contract Law, European and Comparative Law of Torts, and Dutch legal terminology. He is also professor of specific contracts at VUB and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. He serves also as a member of the Commission tasked with the reform of Belgian specific contract law (Book 7 of the Belgian Civil Code). 

His research focuses on contract and tort law, with particular emphasis on private law remedies and private enforcement. Current research addresses the design of private law remedies in response to societal challenges, including collectivisation, inequality, sustainability and digitalisation. He is the author of Algemeen regime van de verbintenis (Kluwer, 1184 p.), published in the series Beginselen van Belgisch Privaatrecht, and regularly publishes and lectures on contract law and obligations. His work was awarded the 2017 TPR Prize for his contribution ‘Sorry?! Apologies as a Legal Remedy under the Law of Torts' (TPR 2017, pp. 1153-1213), and he received an honourable mention for the 2025 Baron Emile van Dievoet Prize for his doctoral dissertation.

He serves on the editorial boards of front rank Belgian law journals, such as Rechtskundig Weekblad (RW), Tijdschrift voor Belgisch Burgerlijk Recht/Revue générale de droit civil (TBBR/RGDC), and the Dutch journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Burgerlijk Recht (NTBR), and is a collaborator of the Revue de droit international et de droit comparé (RDIDC). He is involved in several national and international research groups, including as co-chair of the International Network for Law and Apology Research (INLAR), national reporter for the Institute for European Tort Law and the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) in Vienna, member of the Association Henri Capitant, fellow at the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (Hong Kong), and member of Séminaire en droit des obligations (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and UCLouvain).

He began his studies at KU Leuven Kulak in Kortrijk and completed them in Leuven (magna cum laude, 2014). He obtained his PhD from KU Leuven in 2018 with a dissertation entitled Herstel in natura (die Keure, 2019, 927 pp.), supervised by Bernard Tilleman and Sophie Stijns, as a research fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). He subsequently held positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the City University of Hong Kong, Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (2019-2020), and at KU Leuven (2020-2022). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Liège and a visiting scholar at Leiden University, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, the University of Zurich, and Paris II Panthéon-Assas University.