Remand

In legal practice, remand refers to the act by which an appellate or supervisory court returns a case to the court or administrative body from which it came, usually because the lower decision-maker must apply a corrected legal standard, take additional evidence, or reconsider an issue in light of the appellate ruling. Remand is distinct from outright reversal: the appellate court does not resolve the case on the merits but instructs the lower court on how to proceed.

The term has two principal usages:

• Appellate remand. After hearing an appeal, a court may affirm, reverse, vacate, or remand (often in combination, e.g., "vacated and remanded"). In the U.S. federal system, remand orders are governed by statutes such as 28 U.S.C. § 2106, which authorizes appellate courts to require "such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances." The U.S. Supreme Court frequently issues "GVR" orders — grant, vacate, and remand — when a recent precedent may change the outcome below.
• Removal remand. In U.S. civil procedure, when a case is removed from state court to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1441, the federal court may remand it to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction or procedural defect under 28 U.S.C. § 1447.

Separately, in criminal procedure in many Commonwealth jurisdictions (UK, India, Australia, Canada), "remand" also refers to the pre-trial detention or bail status of an accused person — to be "remanded in custody" or "remanded on bail" pending the next hearing.

In international and supranational forums, analogous mechanisms exist. The Appellate Body of the WTO has historically lacked formal remand authority, a long-noted gap criticized by trade scholars. The Court of Justice of the European Union, by contrast, routinely returns preliminary rulings to referring national courts for application.

Remand reflects the division of labor between fact-finding and law-declaring tiers of any judicial system.