From The Washington Post
By Fred Barbash

Samuel A. Alito urged the Justice Department in 1985 to suggest to the Supreme Court that it consider overruling Roe v. Wade.

In a memo from Alito circulated in the department, he suggested filing a friend of the court brief stating 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.”

In the memo, Alito said he found “this approach preferable to a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade. It has most of the advantages of a brief devoted to the overruling of Roe v Wade,” 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.

“At the same time,” Alito wrote, “it is free of many of the disadvantages that would accompany a major effort” to overturn Roe, in part because if the court declines to do so, “the decision will not be portrayed as a stinging rebuke.”

The document was among those released this morning by the archives.