Richard W. Waterman is Professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. He is the coauthor, with Kirk A. Randazzo, of Checking the Courts: Law, Ideology, and Contingent Discretion, also published by SUNY Press.
""Waterman asks questions of absolutely first order importance to the study of the American presidency. After recognizing the essential ambiguity of Article II, he then establishes its significance for a broad array of arguments about the outer reaches of presidential power through US history. Rather than adjudicate debates about which specific constitutional interpretations are, in one sense or another, objectively correct, Constitutional Ambiguity and the Interpretation of Presidential Power helps to clarify the sheer variety of claims that this ambiguity has supported. At a time of acute anxieties about presidential power and democracy, this book is sorely needed."" — William Howell, author of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy