Veronica Maska '26 J.D. wins 2026 Smith-Doheny Legal Ethics Writing Competition

Notre Dame Law School's Program on Ethics, Compliance & Inclusion has announced the winner of the annual Smith-Doheny Legal Ethics Writing Competition. Recent Notre Dame Law graduate Veronica Maska '26 J.D. was selected as the 2026 winner for her paper, Catholic Clerks in Capital Cases.

Professor Randy Kozel, associate dean for Faculty Development and Academic Affairs and the Fritz Duda Family Professor of Law, supervised the competition again this year. Entries were required to be original, unpublished works concerning any issue within the general category of legal ethics.

Maska's paper extends the analysis in now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Professor John H. Garvey's famous article, Catholic Judges in Capital Cases, by examining the ethical responsibilities of Catholic law clerks in death penalty cases. She argues that Catholic clerks can generally provide legal advice in such cases in good conscience. Barrett and Garvey conclude that Catholic trial judges should recuse themselves from death penalty cases but that Catholic appellate judges may be justified in hearing them. Maska contends that the ethical posture of law clerks at both the trial and appellate levels closely resembles that of appellate judges under Barrett and Garvey's moral framework.

Hailing from Austin, Texas, Maska is a double Domer who graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022 with a degree in Business Analytics. During her 1L summer, she interned for Judge Andrew S. Oldham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She spent her 2L summer at Gibson Dunn as a summer associate.

At Notre Dame Law School, Maska was involved with the Notre Dame Law Review as a senior articles editor, the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic, and the Notre Dame Federalist Society, and served as president of Jus Vitae.

She earned three Faculty Awards for Excellence and was a member of the Dean’s Circle for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years. She was also a recipient of the Patricia O’Hara Scholarship and Leadership Award and the Polking Family Fellowship, a full-tuition fellowship established by Joan and the late Paul Polking, longtime members of the Notre Dame Law School Advisory Council and generous benefactors of the Law School.

Maska will clerk for Judge Amul R. Thapar on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and will then clerk for Judge Andrew S. Oldham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Established in 1997, the Smith-Doheny Legal Ethics Writing Competition is an annual contest recognizing the best papers on legal ethics written by U.S. and Canadian law students. Maska will receive a cash prize for her winning entry.