Charles Fried, a conservative legal scholar who as President Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general argued against abortion rights and affirmative action before the Supreme Court — but who later rejected the conservative legal movement’s rightward march, calling the current high court “reactionary” — died on Jan. 23 at his home in Cambridge, MA. He was 88.

In 2021, as the high court’s Republican-appointed supermajority looked likely to reverse Roe, Mr. Fried wrote in an opinion column for The New York Times, “To overturn Roe now would be an act of constitutional vandalism.” His reasoning was that a 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, had more firmly established the right to abortion than when he opposed it for the Reagan White House.

He became an outspoken critic of the Roberts Court over its rulings limiting voting rights, labor unions, campaign finance reform, and its refusal to limit blatant partisan gerrymandering, believing in change that is incremental and not radical.

Mr. Fried spent nearly 60 years on the Harvard Law School faculty.