554
Stevens, J., dissenting
countries. See ante, at 537. The majority assumes (without citing any evidence) that these statutes were passed in order to depart from the Hague Rules, and that COGSA, our Nation's enactment of the Hague Rules, should therefore be read to mean something different from these statutes. I think the opposite conclusion is at least as plausible: These foreign nations believed nonenforcement of foreign forum selection clauses was consistent with their international obligations, and they passed these statutes to make that explicit. If anything, then, these statutes demonstrate that several foreign countries agree that the United States courts' consistent interpretation of COGSA does not contravene our mutual treaty obligations. Moreover, because Congress is presumed to know the law, Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 696-699 (1979), it has been justified in assuming, based on the courts' uniform interpretation of COGSA prior to today, that no specific statute such as Australia's or South Africa's was necessary to invalidate foreign forum selection and arbitration clauses. The existence of these foreign statutes, then, proves nothing at all.14
III
Lurking in the background of the Court's decision today is another possible reason for holding, despite the clear meaning of COGSA and decades of precedent, that a foreign arbitration clause does not lessen liability. It may be that the Court does violence to COGSA in order to avoid a perceived conflict with another federal statute, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. §1 et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp. V). The FAA requires that courts enforce arbitration clauses in contracts—including those requiring arbitration in foreign coun-14 The majority's puzzling reference to the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, ante, at 538, strikes me as irrelevant. Nothing in that treaty even remotely suggests an intent to enforce arbitration clauses that constitute a "lessening" of liability under COGSA or the Hague Rules.
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