Cite as: 538 U. S. 401 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
will receive diminished protection as a result. The arbitrators may conclude that COGSA applies of its own force or that Japanese law does not apply so that, under another clause of the bill of lading, COGSA controls." Id., at 540. We further emphasized that "mere speculation that the foreign arbitrators might apply Japanese law which, depending on the proper construction of COGSA, might reduce respondents' legal obligations, does not in and of itself lessen liability under COGSA § 3(8)," nor did it provide an adequate basis upon which to declare the relevant arbitration agreement unenforceable. Id., at 541 (emphases added). We found that "[w]hatever the merits of petitioner's comparative reading of COGSA and its Japanese counterpart, its claim is premature." Id., at 540.
The case at bar arrives in a similar posture. Two of the four arbitration agreements at issue provide that "punitive damages shall not be awarded [in arbitration]," App. 107, 147; one provides that "[t]he arbitrators . . . shall have no authority to award any punitive or exemplary damages," id., at 212; and one provides that "[t]he arbitrators . . . shall have no authority to award extra contractual damages of any kind, including punitive or exemplary damages . . . ," id., at 168. Respondents insist, and the District Court agreed, 132 F. Supp. 2d, at 1000-1001, 1005, that these provisions preclude an arbitrator from awarding treble damages under RICO. We think that neither our precedents nor the ambiguous terms of the contracts make this clear.
Our cases have placed different statutory treble-damages provisions on different points along the spectrum between purely compensatory and strictly punitive awards. Thus, in Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U. S. 765, 784 (2000), we characterized the treble-damages provision of the False Claims Act, 31 U. S. C. §§ 3729-3733, as "essentially punitive in nature." In Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 485 (1977), on the other hand, we explained that the treble-
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