Strict scrutiny is the most stringent standard of judicial review used by United States courts. It is part of the hierarchy of standards that courts use to weigh the government’s interest against a constitutional right or principle. The lesser standards are rational basis review and exacting or intermediate scrutiny. These standards are used to test statutes and government action at all levels of government within the United States.
The notion of “levels of judicial scrutiny”, including strict scrutiny, was introduced in footnote 4 of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Carolene Products (1938), one of a series of decisions testing the constitutionality of New Deal legislations. The first and most notable case in which the Supreme Court applied the strict scrutiny standard and found the government actions valid was Korematsu v. United States (1944), in which the Court upheld the exclusion of Japanese Americans from designation areas during World War II. Statutes and policies that are subjected to strict scrutiny often but not always fail to meet it.
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