Legal Definitions - enhanced scrutiny test

The enhanced scrutiny test is a legal term used in corporation law and constitutional law.

In corporation law, the enhanced scrutiny test was established in Unocal Corp. v. Mesa Petroleum, 493 A.2d 946 (Del. 1985), also known as the Unocal Test. The test is applied to a target board's decision-making process when a takeover is occurring, to determine if the business judgment rule will apply to their decisions.

There are two prongs to the enhanced scrutiny test:

• Reasonableness Test: The target board must demonstrate that it had reasonable grounds for believing that a danger to corporate policy and effectiveness existed.
• Proportionality Test: The target board must demonstrate that its action or response was reasonable in relation to the threat posed and that the response was not draconian and inappropriate in response to the threat.

If both prongs of the enhanced scrutiny test are satisfied, then the court will use the business judgment rule to evaluate decisions made by the target board.

In constitutional law, the enhanced scrutiny test is a term used to refer to intermediate scrutiny, which is used to determine the constitutionality of a statute.

An example of the enhanced scrutiny test in corporation law is when a company is facing a hostile takeover bid. The target board must show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that the takeover would harm the company's policies and effectiveness. They must also show that their response to the takeover bid was proportionate to the threat posed.

An example of the enhanced scrutiny test in constitutional law is when a law is challenged for violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court will apply intermediate scrutiny to determine if the law is constitutional. This means that the law must be substantially related to an important government interest.