High Standards

Before becoming an appellate lawyer at Kline & Specter, Corrie Woods spent six years as a clerk to now-Chief Justice Debra Todd of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. “I came to really love the court as an institution and for the intellectually excellent work it was doing, particularly with respect to individual state constitutional rights,” he says. “But coverage of the court and its work would often miss important points. So when I left, I wanted to make a platform that advertised the court and its work—and myself.”

The result was SCOPABlog (scopablog.com). There, Woods publishes monthly docket reviews and commentary on the court’s decisions, as well as occasional features. It also serves as home to The Standard of Review, a podcast in which Woods interviews attorneys who have argued before the court.

A standout podcasting moment for Woods was his June 2025 interview of Women’s Law Project executive director Susan Frietsche, who argued and won the landmark 2023 abortion rights case Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. 

“That case overruled an earlier case that took an extremely crabbed view of the right to reproductive freedom and the concept of equal rights under our state constitution,” Woods says. “As I learned during the interview, Sue had fought and lost the earlier case. It was a pleasure to see someone who had spent a career in the law committed to righting a wrong in the wake of having actually righted it, and in one of the court’s most expansive and well-written opinions ever.”