Cite as: 537 U. S. 79 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
granted Howsam's petition for certiorari to resolve this disagreement. And we now hold that the matter is for the arbitrator.
II
This Court has determined that "arbitration is a matter of contract and a party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has not agreed so to submit." Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574, 582 (1960); see also First Options, supra, at 942-943. Although the Court has also long recognized and enforced a "liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements," Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1983), it has made clear that there is an exception to this policy: The question whether the parties have submitted a particular dispute to arbitration, i. e., the "question of arbitrability," is "an issue for judicial determination [u]nless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise." AT&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers, 475 U. S. 643, 649 (1986) (emphasis added); First Options, supra, at 944. We must decide here whether application of the NASD time limit provision falls into the scope of this last-mentioned interpretive rule.
Linguistically speaking, one might call any potentially dispositive gateway question a "question of arbitrability," for its answer will determine whether the underlying controversy will proceed to arbitration on the merits. The Court's case law, however, makes clear that, for purposes of applying the interpretive rule, the phrase "question of arbitrability" has a far more limited scope. See 514 U. S., at 942. The Court has found the phrase applicable in the kind of narrow circumstance where contracting parties would likely have expected a court to have decided the gateway matter, where they are not likely to have thought that they had agreed that an arbitrator would do so, and, consequently, where reference of the gateway dispute to the court avoids the risk of
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