We'll hear an argument first this morning, case 23.7.13, Bufkin v. McDunna, Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Ms. Bostwick. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, in Gilbert, one of its earliest decisions, the newly created Veterans Court,

recognized both the importance of the benefit of the doubt principle, and the difference between reviewing

findings of fact for clear error and reviewing VA's application of the approximate balance

standard of proof as a matter of law. But the Veterans Court soon strayed from that understanding.

And by 2001, the Court had declared that the agency's approximate balance

assessment can be reviewed only under the deferential clear error standard of 7261A4.

Congress responded by changing the statute. It directed the Veterans Court to take due

account of the Secretary's application of Section 5107B,

the benefit of the doubt statute.

And that new statutory command, unique in administrative review, directed to a specialized Article I tribunal,

reviewing a uniquely pro-claimant agency process must be given effect.

Petitioners have provided an account of Section 7261B1's plain text that gives effect to all

parts of the statute and allows for the meaningful and independent judicial scrutiny that

Congress intended.

Yet the government insists that the statute not only requires

nothing that wasn't already required by Section A before 2002, but also requires the one thing

we know Congress didn't want. Under its view, the Veterans Court does not even look at the

agency's benefit of the doubt rulings, unless a

so long as no factual finding specifically challenged by the veteran is infected with clear error.

That is also what the Veterans Court and the Federal Circuit held in these cases.

Their decisions render Congress's statutory amendment entirely superfluous.

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