652
Opinion of Thomas, J.
does not occur "by" a taking of "evidence." The Court sees the arbitrator as a "hybrid," who acts as both a trier of fact and a reviewer of facts found. Ante, at 623-624. But the presumption of correctness that applies to the plan sponsor's determinations does not make the arbitrator a "reviewing body," ante, at 624, any more than the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial renders the jury a reviewer, rather than a trier, of fact.
The way out of the conundrum is apparent. The terms "unreasonable" and "clearly erroneous" must refer to what are, in effect, elements of the employer's claim in the arbitration proceeding. To prevail in its action before the arbitrator, in other words, the employer must show by a preponderance of the evidence, first, that the plan sponsor has made a determination under one of the relevant provisions and, second, that that determination was either unreasonable or clearly erroneous. This construction requires us to put aside the technical definition of "clearly erroneous" and focus on the literal meaning of the phrase. "Clear" error can simply mean an obvious, plain, gross, significant, or manifest error or miscalculation. See Black's Law Dictionary 250 (6th ed. 1990). That may not be the most natural reading (for a court, that is) of this legal term of art, but if we do not drop the assumption that "clearly erroneous" must be a reference to the Bessemer City standard of review, we cannot avoid the incoherence that has trapped the majority. The term "unreasonable," of course, is even more readily construed to refer to something other than a standard of review, since it can hardly be thought to have a sharply defined meaning that is limited to the context of appellate review. There is, for example, nothing unusual about requiring a party to show as an element of a substantive claim that something—an interstate carrier's filed rate, for example, see Reiter v. Cooper, 507 U. S. 258 (1993)—is "unreasonable." Section 1401(a)(3)(A) is thus susceptible of a reading that gives it a coherent meaning.
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