84
Opinion of the Court
forcing parties to arbitrate a matter that they may well not have agreed to arbitrate.
Thus, a gateway dispute about whether the parties are bound by a given arbitration clause raises a "question of arbitrability" for a court to decide. See id., at 943-946 (holding that a court should decide whether the arbitration contract bound parties who did not sign the agreement); John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Livingston, 376 U. S. 543, 546-547 (1964) (holding that a court should decide whether an arbitration agreement survived a corporate merger and bound the resulting corporation). Similarly, a disagreement about whether an arbitration clause in a concededly binding contract applies to a particular type of controversy is for the court. See, e. g., AT&T Technologies, supra, at 651-652 (holding that a court should decide whether a labor-management layoff controversy falls within the arbitration clause of a collective-bargaining agreement); Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S. 238, 241-243 (1962) (holding that a court should decide whether a clause providing for arbitration of various "grievances" covers claims for damages for breach of a no-strike agreement).
At the same time the Court has found the phrase "question of arbitrability" not applicable in other kinds of general circumstance where parties would likely expect that an arbitrator would decide the gateway matter. Thus " 'procedural' questions which grow out of the dispute and bear on its final disposition" are presumptively not for the judge, but for an arbitrator, to decide. John Wiley, supra, at 557 (holding that an arbitrator should decide whether the first two steps of a grievance procedure were completed, where these steps are prerequisites to arbitration). So, too, the presumption is that the arbitrator should decide "allegation[s] of waiver, delay, or a like defense to arbitrability." Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, supra, at 24-25. Indeed, the Revised Uniform Arbitration Act of 2000 (RUAA), seeking to "incorpo-
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