Abstract:
There is a widely shared belief that the Supreme Court’s Federal
Arbitration Act (FAA) doctrine is far too solicitous of arbitration and
not sufficiently solicitous of state lawmaking power. That may be so,
but the Court has interpreted one provision of the FAA, the savings
clause, to permit the application of state law to invalidate otherwise enforceable arbitration agreements. This Article examines the
savings clause and its impact on provisions in arbitration agreements
that interfere with the ability of claimants to effectively enforce
substantive federal- or state-law rights.