Yseult Marique

Research areas

• Comparative law
• Public finances
• Procurement
• Bias
• Water
• Intergenerational equity

Ongoing research projects

• Title: La sous-traitance dans les marchés publics en Wallonie - Pratiques dans le secteur de la constrution
• Role: co-leader
• Funding: Wallonia Public Service 
• Collaboration : Interdisciplinary project avec HIVA (KULeuven)

Thesis supervision

Past

https://www.uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/juri/theses-defendues

Ongoing

Derard, Leana. Les clauses environnementales dans les marchés publics: réellement exécutées ou greenwashing? FNRS/FRESH (2026-2029)

Networks

• European Network of Public Administration (2025-)
• European Group of Public Administration, Law and Administration stream, co-lead (2024-26)
• Research Network on Public Authorities and Financial Distress (RPAFD) (founding member 2023)

Editorial boards

• Public Law (Royaume-Uni) (2027-)
• Louvain Law Review – Annales de droit de Louvain (BE), co-editor-in-chief (2025-)
• Review of European Administrative Law (NL) (2020-)
• Revue de Fiscalité Régionale et Locale (BE) (2025-)
• Stockholm University Press, série Droit (SW) (2024-)

Highly curious and versatile academic motivated by providing a well rounded analysis of legal issues arising from public decision-making processes, in general and in particular where public, private and intermediary (eg ONGs, civic organisations, families etc.) groups interact (either collaborative or competitively). 

Seeking to map administrative normativity and to pin down how an ethics of care may shape administrative action in case of moral dilemma's (especially in the case of scarce resources or planetary boundaries).

Yseult is a Professor at the Louvain Law School with expertise in comparative public economic law in Europe. She teaches the law of public finances and law and economics at UC Louvain (2022-), French public law (Essex 2010-), and administrative real estate law (ULB 2022-2025). She holds a PhD from Cambridge (2011) and law degrees from the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis (Candidatures, FUSL), the Université libre de Bruxelles (Licences, ULB) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Licenciaat notariaat, VUB). She is a research associate at the Centre de droit Public of the ULB (BE, 2009-) and the Centre Montesquieu d'Etudes de l'Action Publique (BE, 2022-). She was a Fellow of the Deutsches Forschungsinstitut für Öffentliche Verwaltung (Speyer, 2016-2023) and is a Fellow of the Westminster Abbey Institute (UK, 2023-). Yseult develops her academic expertise in two main legal fields, with a keen interest for interdisciplinary collaboration and input from history, ethics, economics/organisational theories and political philosophy.

1/ Law of public finances at all levels of governance (international, European, national, local) 

Yseult is one of the founding members of the Research Network on Public Authorities in Financial Distress. With Eugenio Vaccari, Laura Coordes and Geo Quinot, she is the co-author of a book on Municipalities in Financial Distress : An Environmental, Social and Governance Critique (foreword by Martin Loughlin, Edward Elgar 2025, open access). With Eugenio Vaccari, she is co-editing a book on Local Government and the Territorial Constitution – Social Justice and Local Finances in the UK (foreword by Stephen Bailey, Bristol University Press forthcoming 2026, open access). She co-edited a special issue on solidarity in times of crisis at EU level with Theodore Konstadinides and Esin Küçük for the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law (open access). Her book Public Private Partnerships and the Law - Regulation, Institutions and Community (Edward Elgar 2014) was shortlisted for the 2015 Birks Prize from the Society of Legal Scholars (UK).

An on-going project includes a Commentary of the EU Directive 2014/24 on classic procurement (with Kris Wauters and Laurent Coutron, in French, Larcier, planned publication early 2026). With Frederic De Wispelaere (KULeuven/HIVA), she is mapping the data available on the access for SMEs to subcontracting in the construction sector and developing policy recommendations to improve it (contract awarded by the SPW / service public wallonie, Observatoire wallon de la commande publique, 2025). 

Yseult's approach to the law of public finances builds on her keen interest for public economic law and the allocation of scarce resources (such as money, soil, water or clean air), and she is interested in how public entities spend taxpayers' money for the public good through big infrastructure projects (eg water infrastructures) or how they collect money in innovative ways to sustain their activities. In particular, the borderline between public finances and repression is one of the lines of inquiry she pursues both at EU and at local levels. She connects this question to the tensions arising in the realm of social justice, especially between enforcing public policies and an ethics of care. In addition, a reflection on the different conceptions that decision-makers of the time and space dimensions of their decisions and investments enriches her teaching and research.

2/ Comparative public law in Europe 

 Yseult develops a strand of research pertaining to comparative public law in Europe thanks to her participation in a number of international projects, such as the one led by Giacinto della Cananea on the common core of European administrative law, by Ulrich Stelkens on the pan-European principles of good administration, or by Stephane de la Rosa on the principles of procurement. She authored the entry on administrative courts in the Edward Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, and a chapter on administrative justice and the rule of law in the Oxford Handbook on Administrative Justice. She co-authored an overview of comparative administrative law with Mariolina Eliantonio for the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law and contributed a chapter comparing the European Union and the Council of Europe for Comparative Administrative Law - New Voices (edited by P Lindseth et al, Edward Elgar forthcoming) with Ulrich Stelkens. She co-edited a special issue of REALaw on resistance to transplants in the European administrative state with Emmanuel Slautsky and she is co-editing (with Radosveta Vassileva) a special issue on networks and friendships during the Interwar period.

On-going projects include the updating and expansion of the second edition of the Casebook on Texts and Materials - Judicial Review of Administrative Action (two volumes, with Mariolina Eliantonio - under contract with Hart, planned publication 2026), the co-edition of a book on Pan-european principles of good administration (two volumes, with Ulrich Stelkens - under contract with Brill, planned publication 2026, open access), a co-authored book on Comparative Judicial Review: Principles, Core Questions and Beyond (with Maurice Sunkin, Oren Tamir and Paul Daly - under contract with Edward Elgar, planned publication 2029); and a co-edited Traité de droit administratif transnational (Bruylant in French with Jean-Bernard Auby, Emilie Chevalier and Olivier Dubos).

Yseult is a general reporter for the 2026 International Academy of Comparative Law in Berlin (on digitalisation of legal teaching, with Enguerrand Marique) and a national reporter for the same conference on the use of foreign law by the administrative judge (with François Lichère as the general reporter). She contributes to the Intergovernmental relations project carried out by Johanne Poirier (McGill) and to the Edward Elgar Encyclopedia on Local Government (edited by Edwin Benton and John Kincaid).

Yseult is especially interested in differentiation processes, narratives, linguistic mapping and cognitive mindsets across legal and administrative epistemic communities. She explores these matters in specific administrative law related-topics such as principles of judicial review, procurement, effective judicial protection, ethical standards in the civil service, bias, deference, climate change and intertemporal equity. Yseult has been the recipient of a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust small research grant (2013-2015), a ESRC - Essex Impact Acceleration Account grant (2016), a SLS small project grant (2017-2018), a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2016-2017) and a European Central Bank Legal Research Programme Award (with Emmanuel Slautsky 2025). 

An associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and the Belgian representative for the Group of Independent Experts to the Charter of Local Self-Government, (Council of Europe), Yseult is one of the co-leads of the Law and Administration strand at the European Group of Public Administration (2024-). She is the co-editor-in-chief of the Louvain Law Review (formerly Annales de droit de Louvain, 2025-) and sits on the editorial board of REALaw and in the advisory boards of comparative and European law journals (European Public Law, Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law (2020-2025), Central European Public Administration Review (CEPAR), Droit Public Comparé - Comparative Public Law, French Yearbook of Public Law) and Revue de fiscalité régionale et locale (2025-). Yseult welcomes queries and submissions for REALaw.blog and the Yale Comparative Administrative Law mailserv. 

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Yseult welcomes inquiries for doctoral and post-doctoral supervision and for supporting applications to the MCSA post-doctoral fellowship on topics pertaining to her research interests.