Cite as: 513 U. S. 265 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
. . . desire" to change this antiarbitration rule. Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 220 (1985). It intended courts to "enforce [arbitration] agreements into which parties had entered," ibid. (footnote omitted), and to "place such agreements 'upon the same footing as other contracts,' " Volt Information Sciences, Inc., supra, at 474 (quoting Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S. 506, 511 (1974)).
Second, some initially assumed that the Federal Arbitration Act represented an exercise of Congress' Article III power to "ordain and establish" federal courts, U. S. Const., Art. III, § 1. See Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U. S. 1, 28, n. 16 (1984) (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (collecting cases). In 1967, however, this Court held that the Act "is based upon and confined to the incontestable federal foundations of 'control over interstate commerce and over admiralty.' " Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 405 (1967) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 96, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1924)). The Court considered the following complicated argument: (1) The Act's provisions (about contract remedies) are important and often outcome determinative, and thus amount to "substantive," not "procedural," provisions of law; (2) Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, 71-80 (1938), made clear that federal courts must apply state substantive law in diversity cases, see also Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U. S. 460, 465 (1965); therefore (3) federal courts must not apply the Federal Arbitration Act in diversity cases. This Court responded by agreeing that the Act set forth substantive law, but concluding that, nonetheless, the Act applied in diversity cases because Congress had so intended. The Court wrote: "Congress may prescribe how federal courts are to conduct themselves with respect to subject matter over which Congress plainly has power to legislate." Prima Paint, supra, at 405.
Third, the holding in Prima Paint led to a further question. Did Congress intend the Act also to apply in state courts? Did the Federal Arbitration Act pre-empt conflict-
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