How many times has obama violated the constitution
Executive summary
No authoritative tally exists for “how many times” President Barack Obama violated the Constitution; allegations proliferate across conservative outlets, congressional hearings, and legal scholarship, while courts and administrative bodies occasionally rebuked specific actions — but a single, provable count recognized by the judiciary or a neutral arbiter is absent from the record [1] [2] [3]. The question therefore collapses into two factual points: critics catalog a long list of alleged overreaches, and courts or official reviews have sometimes found individual acts unlawful or procedurally improper — but those findings do not equal a simple numeric “constitutional violation” tally [4] [3] [2].
1. Critics’ inventories: long lists, political framing
Multiple conservative think tanks, opinion outlets, and congressional materials compiled lists of alleged constitutional transgressions by Obama — Cato’s “Top 10” and RealClearPolitics’ republishing of similar lists are explicit examples of efforts to catalog perceived overreach, presenting dozens of discrete complaints ranging from executive orders to rulemaking and military actions [1] [5]. These lists are advocacy pieces framed to show a pattern of executive aggrandizement rather than judicial findings, and they recycle some of the same episodes (recess appointments, immigration directives, signing statements, the Affordable Care Act mandate disputes) as evidence of constitutional breach [1] [5] [6].
2. Cases where courts or agencies intervened
Some actions provoked concrete legal pushback: lower courts and appellate decisions found particular steps problematic (for instance, federal appeals courts ruled against certain recess appointments), and the Supreme Court’s intervention in immigration directives signaled constitutional questions by asking about the Take Care Clause in the DAPA litigation — although the Justices ultimately left the policy blocked in a tied posture rather than issuing a sweeping constitutional condemnation [4] [3]. Congressional committees and the GAO also issued criticisms about executive behavior, but administrative or congressional rebukes differ from a definitive constitutional judgment by the judiciary [2] [7].
3. Prominent contested episodes people cite as “violations”
Commonly cited episodes include the 2011 military action in Libya (criticized as a War Powers Act and Article II issue), Obama-era immigration directives like DAPA and DACA (challenged under the Take Care Clause and administrative law), controversial recess appointments, IRS targeting scandals, and the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate and associated RFRA litigation — all of which fueled assertions of constitutional breach from opponents and produced a mix of court rulings, litigation, and political hearings [8] [3] [4] [9] [10].
4. What counts as a constitutional “violation”?
Legal scholars and defenders of presidential prerogative emphasize that not every contested policy or signing statement is a constitutional violation; many are lawful exercises of executive discretion or unsettled questions of statutory interpretation that courts ultimately decide [6]. Conversely, critics like Senator Grassley, Senator Cruz and others presented broader normative claims that executive actions (especially unilateral immigration or administrative steps) “violate the Constitution” — language reflecting political judgment as much as settled law [2] [11].
5. Why a single number is impossible to produce from available reporting
The assembled sources demonstrate disputes, litigation, and partisan tallies, but they do not produce a definitive, court-sanctioned count of constitutional violations: some episodes ended in judicial rebuke, others in procedural reversals, many never resulted in final judicial findings, and advocacy lists compile allegations rather than adjudicated violations [1] [4] [3]. Therefore the correct, evidence-based answer is not a number but this: allegations are numerous and documented in partisan and legal venues, a subset of actions drew legal or administrative condemnation, but no authoritative source provides a universally accepted numeric count of constitutional violations by President Obama [1] [2] [3].
6. Bottom line: claim versus proof
Political actors and commentators have accused Obama of numerous constitutional breaches — and some specific actions were restricted or criticized by courts, Congress, or agencies — yet the record in the provided reporting shows contested allegations and isolated legal losses, not a validated, enumerated catalogue of constitutional violations validated by neutral judicial resolution [4] [3] [7]. Readers seeking precision must distinguish between partisan lists of alleged violations and the narrower set of actions that produced formal legal findings or agency rebukes in the sources cited [1] [3].