Finding Faith: Grad Reflects on ‘Energizing’ Law School Experience
Faith Chudkowski ’25 Embraces Challenges To Grow Advocacy Skills
Faith Chudkowski ’25 embraced her law school experience at the University of Virginia, putting in long hours of practice at the podium, writing and editing, and organizing events over three years. But this aspiring public servant wouldn’t have it any other way.
Set to graduate from the Law School on May 18, Chudkowski was a quarterfinalist and board member in the 96th William Minor Lile Moot Court competition, executive editor for the Virginia Journal of International Law, vice president for communications for the Federalist Society, a Roadmap Scholars Initiative mentor, a research assistant to Professors Aditya Bamzai and Mitu Gulati, and a guest executive editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She also received the Federalist Society’s Lillian R. BeVier Award and will be a James Wilson Fellow. Chudkowski spent her 1L summer interning for Judge Paul B. Matey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
After graduation, she will clerk for Judge James C. Dever III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The Sayreville, New Jersey, native earned a dual bachelor’s degree in history and government: politics and policy from Liberty University.
In our occasional series “Star Witness,” Chudkowski discussed how being a student organizer shaped her intellectual curiosity and recalled her most rewarding moments in law school.
Why law school?
I grew up in a family where the news was always on and big ideas were always on the table; my parents lived lives that made clear that what you give to your community is the whole ball game. Then, in an eighth-grade homeschool co-op class taught by a local lawyer, we read founding documents and early Supreme Court decisions. I was hooked. Legal texts demanded close reading, invited argument — you couldn’t just blow past the hard questions.
That interest deepened in college, where I studied history and government, helped launch my school’s undergraduate law review and spent summers doing humanitarian relief work related to the Afghan refugee crisis. It was there I saw how law doesn’t just stop harm — it can also constrain good. Even well-intended efforts can get tangled in red tape, shaped by rules no one notices until they’re the one affected. By then, law had brought together everything I really cared about: rigorous thinking, real stakes and the chance to serve others. It’s both an intellectual puzzle and a practical force, shaping how we live together. Law school felt like the right place to wrestle with that and become the kind of advocate who handles those tensions with care.
Tell us more about your activities at UVA Law.
I have loved being involved in a little bit of everything — journals, moot court, student orgs, research and a clinic. I’ve co-authored papers with Professor Gulati, researched for Professor Bamzai, helped host public law colloquia and worked part-time in litigation and policy roles.
I serve on the board of the Lile Moot Court competition, where I was a quarterfinalist last year with Ann Kreuscher ’25. There were nights I’d finish edits at 3 a.m. and hand them off for her to pick up at 6. It was a grind — but the kind that sharpens how you work through a dense mass of material (and makes you a lifelong critic of tire chalking). We were always zeroed in on the brief: the minutiae, the structure, making it the best it could be.
The same kind of focused chaos cropped up heading into this year’s Originalism Symposium. I had to fly to Texas two days before, and with signs and programs still unprinted, I sent a 2 a.m. email from the hotel — color-coded charts, print schedules, pickup times, the works. By the morning of the event, I was on a red-eye back and walked in halfway through the sessions. Everything had gone off without a hitch. That’s the thing about UVA: People show up for each other. You put in the work, trust the team and the plates don’t get dropped.
It’s been full — but energizing. Whether behind the scenes or in the fray, I’ve found real joy in the work, and it’s been a privilege to pour into a community that’s given me so much in return.
Describe your most interesting law school experience.
Collaborative advocacy has been my throughline here — whether in brief-writing, moots, the long days behind major events or the everyday moments in between that sharpened my thinking. Arguing over which opinion had the better theory before class, mooting friends late into the night in Caplin Pavilion, calling a classmate mid-Trader Joe’s run with a new idea for my Appellate Practice brief, knowing he’d give it to me straight. Those small, generous moments — the ones where people are thinking and becoming together — have been representative of my time here.
A highlight came the semester after Appellate Practice, when nine of us reunited to moot [Cate] Stetson [’94] before her Supreme Court argument. I read the briefs, scanned the amici and took up Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett’s line of questioning. It was challenging — and so much fun. Stetson offers a master class in oral advocacy every time she speaks.
But the moment that captured the spirit of it all came this spring, when I received the Lillian R. BeVier Award [named after the school’s first tenured female law professor]. It was the end of a day of panels with some of the country’s most thoughtful scholars, and then, in a quiet moment, I found myself beside a woman whose career helped shape the Law School. She embodies everything I love about UVA: intellectual generosity, institutional commitment, deep care. She’s also what it means to be a UVA lawyer — principled, warm and intellectually fearless. “Hard on ideas, easy on people,” as Dean [Leslie] Kendrick [’06] says. That moment reminded me: The things I love most about this place aren’t abstract ideals. They’re lived out, year after year, by people who care. It was a moment I’ll carry with me.
How did you come to guest edit for a Harvard journal?
The Harvard journal role came from a national call for editors to help put together the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy’s Symposium Issue, which annually publishes work from the previous year’s Federalist Society National Student Symposium. Harvard hosted the 2024 event, “Why Separate Powers?” The editorial team consists of general and executive editors. I applied for a general editor spot 1L year and didn’t get it, but had a feeling it was worth another shot. I reapplied as a 2L and was selected as one of four executive editors. The second time was the charm! One highlight was working on [Harvard Law professor] Cass Sunstein’s piece, “Separation of Powers Is A They, Not An It,” which just came off the press.
What’s something your classmates don’t know about you?
My favorite city is Budapest. I first went to the area for humanitarian work with a few organizations there and in Serbia, but I fell in love with the city itself — its architecture and history, its bookstores and cafés (with some of the best chai I’ve ever had). There’s a quiet beauty to it that’s stayed with me. And I still think about the conversations I had at the time, how they shaped how I think about law, justice and what it means to serve with purpose.
What’s next for you?
I’m drawn to appellate litigation and legal theory — especially the kinds of questions that ask not just what the law is, but what it ought to be. I’ve loved exploring those questions at UVA, whether in moot court, the Public Law Colloquium [a course where scholars present works in progress], or around a whiteboard with friends who push me to think better. I am especially interested in how legal institutions are designed — how power is constrained, and how frameworks shape the kind of civic life we want to sustain. Eventually, I hope to work in public interest litigation or government service, helping to shape a legal culture that’s serious about ideas and serious about people. For now, I look forward to clerking, spending time in practice and carrying forward the curiosity and care I’ve found here. Soli Deo gloria.
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