Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 276

529US1

Unit: $U37

[09-26-01 08:37:34] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 193 (2000)

201

Opinion of the Court

proceeding to modify or vacate the arbitration award, and if
the award withstood attack, the parties would move back
to the previously selected forum for the conﬁrming order
originally sought. Harbert, naturally, is far from endorsing
anything of the sort and contends that a court with venue to
conﬁrm under a § 9 forum selection clause would also have
venue under a later ﬁled motion under § 10. But the conten-
tion boils down to denying the logic of Harbert’s own posi-
tion. The regime we have described would follow from
adopting that position, and the Congress simply cannot be
tagged with such a taste for the bizarre.

Nothing, indeed, would be more clearly at odds with both
the FAA’s “statutory policy of rapid and unobstructed en-
forcement of arbitration agreements,” Moses H. Cone Memo-
rial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 23 (1983),
or with the desired ﬂexibility of parties in choosing a site for
arbitration. Although the location of the arbitration may
well be the residence of one of the parties, or have some
other connection to a contract at issue, in many cases the
site will have no relation whatsoever to the parties or the
dispute. The parties may be willing to arbitrate in an incon-
venient forum, say, for the convenience of the arbitrators, or
to get a panel with special knowledge or experience, or as
part of some compromise, but they might well be less willing
to pick such a location if any future court proceedings had to
be held there. Flexibility to make such practical choices,
then, could well be inhibited by a venue rule mandating the
same inconvenient venue if someone later sought to vacate
or modify the award.

A restrictive interpretation would also place § 3 and
§§ 9–11 of the FAA in needless tension, which could be re-
solved only by disrupting existing precedent of this Court.
Section 3 provides that any court in which an action “refer-
able to arbitration under an agreement in writing” is pend-
ing “shall on application of one of the parties stay the trial
of the action until such arbitration has been had in accord-