Memo: Alito Urged Government to Challenge Roe v. Wade

[Rose Siding]

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. was an architect of the Reagan administration's failed 1985 attempt to have the high court consider overruling Roe v. Wade, according to a memo from the period released today.

Alito, then a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, urged the solicitor general to use a case before the court to "make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."
....
"It has most of the advantages of a brief devoted to the overruling of" Roe , he wrote. "It makes our position clear, does not even tacitly concede Roe 's legitimacy, and signals that we regard the question as live and open."

He added that the approach was "free of many of the disadvantages that would accompany a major effort to overturn Roe . When the court hands down its decision and Roe is not overruled," he reasoned, the decision "will not be portrayed as a stinging rebuke" to the administration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113000723.html