Cite as: 532 U. S. 105 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
not apply because § 1 exempts labor contracts. That was how Justice Frankfurter, who of course was present during the deliberations on the case, explained the disposition of the FAA issues. See 353 U. S., at 466-468 (dissenting opinion).12
Even if Justice Frankfurter's description of the majority's rejection of the applicability of the FAA does not suffice to establish Textile Workers as precedent for the meaning of § 1, his opinion unquestionably reveals his own interpretation of the Act. Moreover, given that Justice Marshall and I have also subscribed to that reading of § 1,13 and that three more Members of this Court do so in dissenting from today's decision, it follows that more Justices have endorsed that view than the one the Court now adopts. That fact, of course, does not control the disposition of this case, but it does seem to me that it is entitled to at least as much respect as the number of Court of Appeals decisions to which the Court repeatedly refers.
III
Times have changed. Judges in the 19th century dis-favored private arbitration. The 1925 Act was intended to overcome that attitude, but a number of this Court's cases decided in the last several decades have pushed the pendu-12 In Justice Frankfurter's words, "Naturally enough, I find rejection, though not explicit, of the availability of the Federal Arbitration Act to enforce arbitration clauses in collective-bargaining agreements in the silent treatment given that Act by the Court's opinion. If an Act that authorizes the federal courts to enforce arbitration provisions in contracts generally, but specifically denies authority to decree that remedy for 'contracts of employment,' were available, the Court would hardly spin such power out of the empty darkness of § 301. I would make this rejection explicit, recognizing that when Congress passed legislation to enable arbitration agreements to be enforced by the federal courts, it saw fit to exclude this remedy with respect to labor contracts." Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U. S., at 466 (dissenting opinion).
13 See Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 36, 38-41 (1991) (dissenting opinion).
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