The U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims also has jurisdiction to review petitions for extraordinary relief filed against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). If the VA is delaying your case, you can file a petition to force the VA to make a decision in your case. If the Court determines that the Secretary has acted unlawfully or failed to act, it is authorized to order the VA to take any action it deems appropriate.
Each year the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (Board or BVA) decides roughly 36,000
appeals for veterans and their dependents. Of these decisions, the Board will deny close to half of these appeals for Veterans benefits. Only 3,500 of these persons will file appeals with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC).
Most veterans who file appeals with the Court receive a favorable result. The Court has traditionally found that over 70 percent of the Board’s decisions contain errors and must be set aside.
If the CAVC sets aside a Board decision, it is most likely that the CAVC will vacate the Board’s decision and remand the appeal to the Board for a new decision. Sending a case back to the Board for a new decision is called a remand.
Judicial review is an important right that veterans only recently have been granted by Congress in 1988. The Court is not well known, but it has had a tremendous impact on the way the VA and the Board handle claims
