944
Opinion of the Court
that conclusion does not help First Options win this case. That is because a fair and complete answer to the standard-of-review question requires a word about how a court should decide whether the parties have agreed to submit the arbitrability issue to arbitration. And, that word makes clear that the Kaplans did not agree to arbitrate arbitrability here.
When deciding whether the parties agreed to arbitrate a certain matter (including arbitrability), courts generally (though with a qualification we discuss below) should apply ordinary state-law principles that govern the formation of contracts. See, e. g., Mastrobuono, ante, at 62-63, and n. 9; Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 475-476 (1989); Perry v. Thomas, 482 U. S. 483, 492-493, n. 9 (1987); G. Wilner, 1 Domke on Commercial Arbitration § 4:04, p. 15 (rev. ed. Supp. 1993) (hereinafter Domke). The relevant state law here, for example, would require the court to see whether the parties objectively revealed an intent to submit the arbitrability issue to arbitration. See, e. g., Estate of Jesmer v. Rohlev, 241 Ill. App. 3d 798, 803, 609 N. E. 2d 816, 820 (1993) (law of the State whose law governs the workout agreement); Burkett v. Allstate Ins. Co., 368 Pa. 600, 608, 534 A. 2d 819, 823-824 (1987) (law of the State where the Kaplans objected to arbitrability). See generally Mitsubishi Motors, supra, at 626.
This Court, however, has (as we just said) added an important qualification, applicable when courts decide whether a party has agreed that arbitrators should decide arbitrability: Courts should not assume that the parties agreed to arbitrate arbitrability unless there is "clea[r] and unmistakabl[e]" evidence that they did so. AT&T Technologies, supra, at 649; see Warrior & Gulf, supra, at 583, n. 7. 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 be-
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