538
Opinion of the Court
ance to foreign forum selection clauses "has little place in an era when . . . businesses once essentially local now operate in world markets." Id., at 12. "The expansion of American business and industry will hardly be encouraged," we explained, "if, notwithstanding solemn contracts, we insist on a parochial concept that all disputes must be resolved under our laws and in our courts." Id., at 9. See Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 638 (1985) (if international arbitral institutions "are to take a central place in the international legal order, national courts will need to 'shake off the old judicial hostility to arbitration,' and also their customary and understandable unwillingness to cede jurisdiction of a claim arising under domestic law to a foreign or transnational tribunal") (citation omitted); Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S., at 516 ("A parochial refusal by the courts of one country to enforce an international arbitration agreement" would frustrate "the orderliness and predictability essential to any international business transaction"); see also Allison, Arbitration of Private Antitrust Claims in International Trade: A Study in the Subordination of National Interests to the Demands of a World Market, 18 N. Y. U. J. Int'l Law & Pol. 361, 439 (1986).
That the forum here is arbitration only heightens the irony of petitioner's argument, for the FAA is also based in part on an international convention, 9 U. S. C. § 201 et seq. (codifying the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, June 10, 1958, [1970] 21 U. S. T. 2517, T. I. A. S. No. 6997), intended "to encourage the recognition and enforcement of commercial arbitration agreements in international contracts and to unify the standards by which agreements to arbitrate are observed and arbitral awards are enforced in the signatory countries," Scherk, supra, at 520, n. 15. The FAA requires enforcement of arbitration agreements in contracts that involve interstate commerce, see Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U. S. 265 (1995), and in maritime transactions, including bills
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007