Opinion ID: 758402
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Federal court jurisdiction to decide issues of arbitrability

Text: 29 Under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), courts have developed a federal common law of arbitrability that implements Congress' expression of a strong national policy favoring the resolution of commercial disputes through arbitration. See Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U.S. 265, 270-71, 115 S.Ct. 834, 130 L.Ed.2d 753 (1995). Under this law, the question of arbitrability--whether a [contract] creates a duty for the parties to arbitrate the particular grievance--is undeniably an issue for judicial determination. Unless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise, the question of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate is to be decided by the court, not the arbitrator. AT & T Technologies v. Communications Workers, 475 U.S. 643, 649, 106 S.Ct. 1415, 89 L.Ed.2d 648 (1986). 30 Unlike the general presumption that a particular issue is arbitrable when the existence of an arbitration agreement is not in dispute, see Moses H. Cone Mem'l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24-25, 103 S.Ct. 927, 74 L.Ed.2d 765 (1983), when the dispute is whether there is a valid and enforceable arbitration agreement in the first place, the presumption of arbitrability falls away. See First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 944-45, 115 S.Ct. 1920, 131 L.Ed.2d 985 (1995). As the Court explained, 31 Courts should not assume that the parties agreed to arbitrate arbitrability unless there is clear and unmistakable evidence that they did so. In this manner, the law treats silence or ambiguity about the question who (primarily) should decide arbitrability differently from the way it treats silence or ambiguity about the question whether a particular merits-related dispute is arbitrable because it is within the scope of a valid arbitration agreement--for in respect to this latter question the law reverses the presumption. 32 Id. (citations omitted); see also Cogswell v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., 78 F.3d 474, 480 (10th Cir.1996). Courts will not apply the traditional presumption in favor of arbitrability when the particular issue is whether the parties have agreed to allow an arbitrator to decide the existence of their putative agreement to arbitrate because doing so might ... force unwilling parties to arbitrate a matter they reasonably would have thought a judge, not an arbitrator, would decide. First Options, 514 U.S. at 945, 115 S.Ct. 1920. Furthermore, the issue is not whether it would be more convenient for courts or arbitrators to decide whether the parties have a valid and enforceable agreement to arbitrate, but rather whether the parties' agreement contains 'clear and unmistakable' evidence they intended the arbitrator to decide the issue. Cogswell, 78 F.3d at 481. 33