Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-105_5536.pdf
Page Number: 18

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

5 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

ity points to have nothing to do with arbitration or §16 (un-
like the two provisions discussed above, which were enacted 
in the same 1988 law as §16 and codified alongside §16 in
the Federal Arbitration Act, respectively, supra, at 3).

Moreover, and in any event, the majority’s cited statutes
do not support the majority’s mandatory-general-stay rule.
The majority invokes statutes that expressly preclude au-
tomatic stays of all trial court proceedings.  But if the ma-
jority is correct that Congress intended the opposite when 
a statute is silent, then stays of all trial court proceedings
would be required.  Yet, the majority’s own holding does not 
go that far.  See ante, at 4, n. 2.  Instead, the majority re-
quires stays for some proceedings (those related to the mer-
its) but not others (those related to costs and fees), ibid.—a 
line that appears nowhere in the majority’s cited statutes.   
At the end of the day, the best the majority can do is point 
to  a  smattering  of  provisions  that  do  not  contain  the  rule 
that the majority adopts.  And those provisions do not even 
relate to §16 or the majority’s rule (staying litigation gener-
ally but not proceedings on costs and fees).  Neither those 
statutes, nor any other, imposes on arbitrability appeals the
stay rule that the Court announces. 

II 
Unable to locate its rule in a statute, the majority opinion
pivots to “background principle[s].”  Ante, at 3.  But there is 
no background mandatory-general-stay rule. 

To the contrary, the background rule is that courts have
case-by-case discretion regarding whether or not to issue a 
stay.  “[T]he power to stay proceedings is incidental to the 
power inherent in every court to control the disposition of 
the causes on its docket.”  Landis v. North American  Co., 
299 U. S. 248, 254 (1936).  That power is discretionary—it
“calls for the exercise of judgment, which must weigh com-
peting interests” in each particular case.  Id., at 254–255.