My law school classmate Phil Miles, and propriety of the cool Lawffice Space blog, offers a review of Unprecedented. Here is a sample:

Prof. Blackman does a particularly good job of explaining the context of the litigation, and the history of health care reform leading up to the ACA. Readers will learn about the Reagan-era (yes, Reagan) legislation that made the individual mandate a necessary component of the ACA, the early conservative (yes, conservative) mandate proposals, and the similar flips and flops from prominent liberal proponents of the ACA (including a trip down not-so-distant memory lane of Obama’s opposition to “Hillarycare’s” mandate).

I thoroughly enjoyed Unprecedented from beginning to end. Prof. Blackman was present for a number of “behind the scenes” events, which provides a personal touch to a sometimes-sterile topic. Although I have greater familiarity with the law in this area than most, I still think it is accessible and understandable to laypeople (or attorneys who have only the vaguest understanding of it). The book strikes a nice balance of providing in-depth coverage while not getting bogged down in minutiae.

If you are in the Philly area today, I’ll be giving a talk at UPenn at noon in the Fitts Auditorium. See you soon!