Some embodiments of the present invention provide techniques and systems for performing scenario reduction using a dominance relation on a set of corners. During operation, the system can receive a design library which specifies gate characteristics at each corner in a set of corners. Next, the system can use the design library to determine a dominance relation on the set of corners for each gate type. The dominance relations can be stored with the design library. The system can then receive a set of scenarios over which a circuit design is to be optimized. Next, the system can determine a subset of the set of scenarios using one or more dominance relations on the set of corners. The system can then optimize the circuit design over the subset of the set of scenarios.