Did all Amendments to the Constitution come in reaction to Supreme Court decisions?

Answer 1

No, not all of them, although it's fair to say the Eleventh, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Nineteenth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments were necessitated in some way by Supreme Court decisions.

The first Ten Amendments (Bill of Rights) were created to appease some of the states that didn't want to ratify the Constitution without some guarantees of protection from the federal government.

The Eleventh Amendment was a reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, (1793), because the Court held the states lacked sovereign immunity from being sued by citizens for war debt accumulated during the Revolution.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (also called the Reconstruction Amendments) were created as a result of the Civil War; however, the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, (1857), was a major kindling factor in that war.

The Sixteenth Amendment was a direct reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., (1895), which declared Congress' attempt to institute an income tax unconstitutional.

The Nineteenth Amendment granting women's suffrage wasn't ratified as a direct result of a Supreme Court case, but was necessitated by the Court's interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment not applying to women, in Minor v. Happersett,(1875), an equal protection challenge based on the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's peculiar interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment was that it "...did not confer upon women the right to vote but only the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of their sex in the setting of voting qualifications."

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment reducing the national voting age for both federal and state elections from 21 to 18 was ratified in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, (1970), in which a divided Court declared Congress could reduce the voting age for federal elections, but did not have the authority to override state voting regulations. The states, contemplating the expense and confusion of holding separate elections for state and federal office, were happy to agree to this Amendment.

Most of the other amendments involved what the Court refers to as "political questions," which it typically declines to hear.